by Arthur Stone
Ros wasn’t much of an aesthete, but paying for a freak like that seemed an odd thing to do.
Still, he was in no position to judge others, having performed a very radical transformation of his own character just yesterday.
“Right on, listen up!” Barry started. “I know a cool cave. Once we get in, keep right behind me—no one runs out in front. Once I grab aggro and start attacking, the lot of you join in. Archer girl, make sure you don’t shoot me in the back—the likes of you are good at it. Shoot their archers and mages if you see any. They’ll shift their attention to you, so don’t just stand there—run back the second they turn on you. They’ll chase you, and run into me. Well, you get it. Nursie, you know any buffs?”
“Sure do,” Ros replied.
“Damn, you’ve got a real-life character! How old are you?”
“Does it matter? I have buffing and healing skills.”
“Ugh, I don’t like babysitting kids. They only cause problems.”
“Well, I happen to be capable!”
“I’m sure. All right, look, if you draw the mobs’ aggro or start dealing damage instead of healing, I’ll kick you out of the party at once. Got it?”
“Why does the leader get all the loot?” asked Marrak.
“We’ll share everything fairly once we’re done.”
“Why don’t you go on your own? You won’t have to share with anyone then.”
“Greenskin, what’s your deal? Do I look like a rip-off artist to you?”
“I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Either set up fair loot distribution, or look for other players.”
“In that case, I’ll leave, too,” said Babe.
“Oh, to hell with you. OK, I’ll disband the party, specify random loot drops, and send you invites once again.”
Nobody minded that.
Ros found it funny. He had enough stuff in his bag and on his character to buy half the village, and there he was arguing about sharing trophies from noob mobs.
But he didn’t let it show.
* * *
The Fallen City looked just like the coachman had described it—a hill pocked with black marks of tunnels burrowing deep inside. There were players near some of the entrances—small groups as well as lone figures. The chat was overflowing with requests from players seeking to join a group. Barry recruited a poorly-dressed level fifteen warrior with a notched sword called Sathitankur Abilangus.
It was easy to see that Sath had one of the cheaper accounts. Ros nearly shed a tear when nostalgia for his recent past hit him.
The dwarf led the party confidently, ignoring all the entrances they passed. A bloodied archer jumped out of one such hole as they approached, and started to roll downhill with a wild yell. Barry explained:
“He must have leveled up his running skill or downed a speed potion. The party wiped, while this guy managed to reach the entrance. The undead hate sunlight, so they didn’t chase him any further.”
“I’d hate to come here at night,” declared Babe.
“At night? You’d have to be a complete moron to come here after dusk. The kind of critters that creep up from the lower levels at night would make even a level fifty player sweat. There are bosses down there, too, but they stay deep underground and never come up.”
“Bosses?” Ros perked up, and, remembering that he should come across like a girl with no experience in life or gaming, added, “Aren’t they supposed to drop lots of valuables?”
“Sure,” Barry conceded. “But we’re the ones who will drop instead of the valuables. The local bosses are stingy and don’t drop much, whereas the mobs respawn quickly. The carcasses of the ones you kill decompose instantly, and the ground sucks in their remnants. Then they are revived somewhere down there, and it happens real fast. You’ll barely manage to mop them up by the time the respawned ones arrive from below. You could use a bunch of top players to clear up everything up to the bosses, with a party of level-appropriate characters following behind. But you’d have to bring the party back up, too. It would take around ten or twenty hours all in all, and you’d need around eight tough players; and all you’d get in return is one or two good or excellent items—and that’s not guaranteed, mind you. That’s thirty or forty bucks per person—a hundred if you’re very lucky. What about the elixirs they would use for combat? Or the wear and tear on expensive weapons and armor from the iron skeletons, requiring costly repairs? It’s not worth it, really. Top players have much easier and more reliable ways of making money. And here’s our hole.”
“What’s so special about this one?” asked Ros.
“Well, for one thing, cotton-armored schoolkids like you are harder to kill here. There’s a long tunnel with no side corridors, and no one will strike us in the back. We dispatch the ones in front, while you stand behind us and heal.”
“Got it.”
“Ready? Give us a buff, then.”
Ros cast all three of his buffing spells on each party member. One increased physical defense, the other, physical attack, and the third sped up mana regeneration. The skills weren’t very developed, and the bonuses they provided were minuscule. However, no one demonstrated any surprise or dissatisfaction, so his abilities must be typical for his level.
As he’d learned from his own experience and from studying guides, if stats could be distributed any way one liked, developing them one after another, all of them wholesale, or none of the above, sufficing with only the points gained by leveling, skills were much more difficult and complicated. If you wanted them to grow, you needed to use them in combat as much as possible, with no regard for mana. That was the only way to progress in any given skill, and the progress was painfully slow.
For all the fighting Ros had done, his Chaos Arrow had only grown to tier three; then again, admittedly, he hadn’t used it all that often. He had managed to level Lesser Healing of the Summoned Creature all the way up to eight due to constantly needing to replenish the leprus’ HP. But even this skill lagged far behind the progress of his stats.
Noob spells were weak, which meant it was next to impossible to level up a mage on one’s own. The character’s defenses were too weak, and the damage dealt at the lower levels was too insignificant. The mana expenditure was high as well. A warrior could destroy over a dozen mobs over the time it took a mage to kill just two, and without requiring any rest or potions to replenish mana. It was a little harder for an archer, as arrows cost money and would often break or get lost. However, they still spent fewer resources, and leveled even faster than melee fighters due to the damage dealt.
Mages were a tough class to play, suffering from a number of extremely unpleasant setbacks. First of all, they really needed to watch the weight they carried. The heavier the load, the slower their spells were cast. And a mage who was too slow casting a spell would be the second funniest sight in Second World—right after a dwarf buffer armed with a bow. Their entire strategy hinged on keeping mobs at a distance, so slowing down meant they’d have to do a tank’s work, something mages were very poorly qualified for. Even if you dressed one up in a suit of armor, any incoming melee damage was likely to interrupt the spell, which would have to be cast again. It was easy enough to surmise that low casting speed would result in frequent interruptions. In such a situation mages could only wave their staves about awkwardly, while the enemy kept pounding away at them.
Players who chose to use magic had to wear the lightest armor available or forgo it altogether in favor of cloth garments, derisively referred to as “rags.” The only thing that Ros found reassuring was that the mechanics of the game did not let his bag, no matter how heavy, affect the speed of spellcasting. But it didn’t provide any protection, either, only making it easier to gather and transport loot.
Another factor was that mages needed to prioritize two of their stats: Intellect and Mental Power. Intellect affected a large number of important characteristics. A high Intellect made it more likely to break the opponent’s magic defense, and was also
responsible for the size of one’s mana pool and its regeneration rate. Mental Power affected magic damage, the amount of restored hit points, the duration of high-level debuffs and costly buffs.
Neither Intellect nor Mental Power provided any protection to the character, despite impacting some other things in combination with other stats. For example, a character with a high Intellect was harder to “hit” with skills from the Reason school, while Mental Power increased the efficiency of equipment with bonuses to Magic Defense.
Yet, neither stat affected physical damage sustained.
Warriors, archers, and the like were a whole other kettle of fish. All of them leveled their Agility and Strength—apart from everything else, the former was linked to one’s chance to evade enemy skills, projectile weapons, and melee attacks, while the latter made it possible to wear heavy armor, which reduced physical damage considerably. Furthermore, simply playing their typical role in combat grew their Stamina, Accuracy, Vigor, Attack, and Defense. This happened to the mages a lot less often—mobs never reached them, and they never attacked them with melee weapons.
Thus, everybody raised their defensive stats but mages. They were bound to remain squishy punching bags—the alternative would be to dump their undistributed points into something like Stamina instead of boosting their damage output. But a “tank mage” of this sort was a pain to play with—such a character could not withstand much damage, being vastly inferior to warriors in this respect, while also being weak attackers and thus of dubious utility to a party, often running out of mana to boot.
All this forced mages into being a class with a narrow specialization, dealing in warfare exclusively, or helping to farm a special kind of bosses with high physical and low magic defenses. Even then, they needed to reach at least level 100-150 to do any of this, whereupon they were capable learning skills from scrolls that couldn’t be purchased at any Mages’ Guild, but could only be found or dropped by mobs. Those skills were truly something, dealing a whole lot of damage, even at the cost of a lot more mana. Once again, they were useless for solo leveling—kill even a handful of mobs, then wait for all your best skills to come off cooldown. However, in a siege of an enemy fortress or a skirmish between the troops of warring clans, two or three mages could give their party a decisive advantage with their area-of-effect spells, especially when cast simultaneously.
The problem with such skills was that one could buy a decent car for the amount of money they fetched, perhaps a very decent one. Some even cost in the range of customized luxury models—or more.
As a result, mages were rather unpopular, to say the least, due to their leveling difficulties and the amounts of time, money, and effort it took to turn your character into a capable fighter.
There were no limits on the skills one could learn. You could collect them all, provided they didn’t conflict with each other, which would be a problem in and of itself. However, high-level skills required specific weapons—of the magical variety, or even highly-specialized magic staves. If a player had warrior’s abilities, one needed to wield a sword, an axe, or another weapon to be able to use a particular skill. That was costly and awkward, so weapons were the most expensive part of one’s equipment.
Apart from that, even high-level skills required leveling up, which took a lot of time.
Thus, the arsenal of a high-level player would normally contain three or four skills actively used in battle, typically of the basic noob variety raised to respectable levels. The richer players had another skill or two learned from rare scrolls. But even tycoons didn’t need more than ten, as it would take years to develop them. It would also be confusing to have too many skills—one would have to keep all their effects and usage parameters in mind, and be able to recall them in a pinch, which was even harder.
It wasn’t until Ros had poured over the forum on these topics that he realized what a rare and awesome prize his Chaos Arrow was, being a dynamic scalable skill. All he needed to do was keep leveling it, and it would transform as it grew, not only increasing its damage but also gaining additional effects. Eventually, it would be as good, or almost as good, as the skills learned from scrolls.
Or perhaps it would evolve into something even better—after all, he’d received it instead of a hero’s title, so it should compensate for the injustice.
Anyway, he would not level it today. Ros’ current role was merely that of a party’s first aid kit. He would spend a day here, play his new role with gusto, and, with luck, be spotted by some search party. They were bound to send someone here to check things out, after all. Then he would continue onwards, telling everyone he’d meet that leveling at the Fallen City was no longer prudent.
Ros didn’t come here randomly—he intended to leave tomorrow with the level of twenty-five or higher.
There was nothing to do at the Fallen City for players that advanced—they would have to seek new pastures and tougher mobs.
Chapter 38
Another unpleasant-looking figure jumped out of the darkness—the mummy of a small creature with a curved club in its bony hand. Barry thrust his shield forward to intercept the hit and pushed the mob back with force. It fell and never managed to rise again, its ribcage smashed by a hammer blow.
But three more creatures emerged from the darkness, and the dwarf only managed to get two of them. The last mummy ignored the tank, and attacked Babe for some reason, though she hadn’t done it any harm. Marrak materialized behind the mob, only slightly taller, striking the target in the neck with one dagger and paralyzing it, then lodged the second in the mummy’s temple. Ros cast his healing spell on the dwarf, whose HP bark shrunk a little, and the battle was over in half a minute. Another small pack of undead goblins was destroyed.
“You don’t mind us harassing your undead relatives, do you?” asked Barry with a chuckle.
Marrak did not respond, no stranger to jokes of this sort. He just searched the corpses for loot without saying a word. Ros liked the way he carried himself. The halfling might look weird, but he did his job very efficiently, and must have been dependable. Unlike the chatterbox dwarf, he hadn’t let the party down once.
“Nursie, I told you not to cast any healing unless I lose a lot of HP. Why do you do it almost right away? What if the mob switches its attention to you?”
“Well, it hasn’t, has it?”
“I’m a tank, so I can take plenty of damage, whereas you’re a squishy little rag doll likely to bite the dust in only a few blows. Wanna find yourself back at the village, eh? Don’t join the fray until I get all the mobs to attack me by giving each one a good whack on the head. Also, the lot of you… get ready, we may run into some archers now. And mages. You never know, it’s different every time. If it’s mages, I’ll start losing HP fast, so Nursie will have to be quick.”
“Got it.”
“Marrak, attack the mages from behind. They hit hard, but they’re just as squishy as our Nursie. Hey! There’s another bunch of gobs up in front. I can see them—dwarves have Twilight Vision. I’ll bring all of them over, so get ready for a train!”
The dwarf was as good as his word—he came running back, followed by seven smaller mummies at once. He nearly instantly used some skill affecting all nearby foes, and yelled:
“Heal me!”
Ros cast a healing spell obediently. Two goblins at once left the dwarf alone and rushed toward the healer to dispense punishment. Barry’s skill must have missed them, or his healing the tank had enraged them more than the damage received.
“Run, Nursie!!!” yelled the dwarf, so loud it rung in everyone’s ears.
Ros decided against running. Instead, he dealt the first goblin a blow on the forehead with his staff, making the mob fall on its rear end, then dodged the other one, tripping the undead creature up and making it roll down the well-trodden earthen floor.
Ros cast a healing spell on the dwarf without paying the mobs any further attention—the tank’s HP bar had shrunk by some ten percent. Sathitankur helped him with
his unsightly sword. Babe held the arrow nocked, batting her unrealistically long eyelashes, but Marrak did what he had to, dashing to help the healer while ignoring the main group. Within seconds he killed one of the gobs, and tied up the second.
Another one stopped hammering away at the dwarf and went after Ros, just as Babe finally made her choice and skewered it with an arrow.
The dwarf kept yelling, “Heeeeeeeal!” even though he was no longer under attack and his HP were almost fully restored.
A much larger group of mummified gobs emerged from the darkness. They bypassed the dwarf, waving their clubs, having reached a unanimous decision that the healer was more important.
By and large, they were right.
Marrak glanced toward the exit, which was a long way away, and then at the attacking mobs. He winced and said, almost spitting every word:
“Run, Nursie, I’ll hold them back.”
Ros ran for about ten paces and turned around just as Marrak, having spun around himself twice like an enormous green top, managed to get each mob that was passing by with his daggers. The gobs stopped and assaulted their “relative,” having lost all interest in Ros.
He cast a healing spell, followed by another, and another. Marrak’s defenses were weak, and the greenskin’s HP kept flickering between nearly empty and completely full. That was Ros’ doing. The skill was noobish and he’d never managed to level it, but his unnaturally high Mental Power made the healing rather effective.
“Heeeeeeal!” the dwarf kept on shouting on top of his lungs.
Judging by his icon in the party window, he had absolutely no reason to yell—he’d barely lost a quarter of his HP, so he could wait a bit longer.
“Shut up, will you?!” Ros shouted. “Your yelling will attract more of them! Get the ones attacking Marrak! He’s doing the tanking for you!”
