“Well this doesn’t seem right,” we all heard Dan say.
“You ok out there Dan?” Jason asked.
“Yeah man, I’m fine. I found the camp. But there is something wrong I think,” Dan replied and then linked us the location to our maps. It was a short way from our current location.
“Well what seems to be the problem brother?” Wayne asked.
“This is the problem,” Dan said and then linked us a Bandit Guard. And the mob was yellow to all of us. At level 14. Dan was right, that shouldn’t be the case.
“How many guards did you see Dan? Are they all yellow, or just that one guy?”
“All of them. I’ve seen four from a distance and each one is yellow Alex. Pulling these single we would still have a hard time with just one.”
“Ok Dan, get back here and let’s figure this out,” I told him.
Dan arrived a few minutes later and we started talking about our options. We knew our gear was the best in the game, and that on a single yellow we could probably take it if we managed the aggro properly. But if we got two we would probably be looking at a slaughter.
Dan was surprisingly quiet throughout our discussions and I was about to engage his thoughts when he yelled out, “Eureka!”
Dan didn’t hesitate to fill us in on his find. “Well this will teach us not to read the quests when we get them from Sir Asshat. Everyone open up your quest log and tell me what you see.”
Sure enough, as soon as we opened up the log we were able to see where we had gone wrong. Under the quest description was a small annotation that read “Players Allowed: 8”
“Son of a bitch! This is a mini-raid. Well that makes way more sense now, since all these guys are yellow!” Wayne exclaimed.
We knew who we would want to raid with us, but their levels would not do much good in a fight like this. And they likely would have to progress to this point before they would be allowed to take part in the quest as well.
“Has anyone reached out to Jenny and her team? Wayne?” I asked.
Wayne’s blush gave away the fact that he had indeed been in touch with the female Paladin, and likely quite regularly.
“Um, yeah Alex. I talk to Jenny every now and again. You know…about strategies and all that. And stuff. You know,” Wayne rambled.
“It’s cool man. That’s nice of you to help her out like that. Very altruistic of you,” I responded while smirking more than just a little bit.
“Oh! Another name I can call our Cleric! Altruist!” Dan yelled out.
“Way to stay on topic Dan,” Jason replied, not the least bit amused.
“So where are they at in the game now Wayne? Done the sewers yet?”
“Yup, they finished the sewers and they have been grinding through for levels. They are trying to get to level 13 so they can get the same quest we just finished. Sorry to say though, it will likely be a while before they get there. Probably another week. And before you think that maybe there is another team out there we could join up with, there really isn’t. Since we helped out with the AltCon quest, and then got them set up with the rings, they have grown to be the second best group in the game. Jenny sends her thanks for that by the way.”
“Sure, we do all the work and Wayne gets all the hugs. Think Kaitlin will give me a hug?” Dan asked while Wayne blushed even deeper.
“More likely it will be Gary.” Jason answered and we all laughed.
“Well we are faced with a bit of a quandary then aren’t we? We obviously can’t take these guys. And we are going to have to wait a while before we can get help from our team mates. Any suggestions?” I asked.
“Let’s just stay out here and get experience. The mobs aren’t dropping much in loot so we don’t have to worry about getting back to town to sell our stuff. And this is likely an untouched area, so we will have free reign on the mobs,” Jason supplied.
“I’m in agreement with Allister. I will let Jenny know what is going on, and let her know that her raid team is ready once they finish the supply quest. I would offer to help them, but there really isn’t much more we can do to help them out. Our gear is still better, but they are inching up on us,” Wayne said.
“Well I get new spells at level 15, as I’m sure Altruist does as well, so we fight out here till 15 and then head back to Port Town,” Dan added at the end.
I didn’t like the idea of being so far away from Stan and not getting a chance to practice more with my Rogue skills, but the group was right. We needed to be out here leveling since the only mobs that would give us experience near Port Town at this point were the ones in front of Stan’s home.
“Agreed. Let’s move a bit away from the camp in case there is a wandering guard. I don’t want to be in the middle of a fight and suddenly have to take on a Yellow mob.”
We only had a couple of hours before we planned to call it a day, so we headed out away from the bandit camp and started killing mobs. Our experience bars were moving dreadfully slow, but we didn’t have anything else to do. As Jason had mentioned earlier, the mobs didn’t have any loot worth mentioning on them, so we didn’t have to worry about getting over loaded and suffering from fatigue.
After those two hours, we found a safe place to log out for the night and agreed to log back on at 10am to continue grinding. This was likely to be a long week, if not longer, depending on how quickly Jenny and her team could level up and complete the next quest.
* * *
September 6th, 2043
Logging back in, I couldn’t see any noticeable change from where I had logged out and where I had logged in, but that ever present ERROR message still popped up every time I entered the game. It was only for the briefest of moments, but it was still there. It had become routine for me to check my character when I logged in to ensure that my Chance hadn’t reverted to a normal number. Upon inspection I saw it was still tweaked, and my Chance was at 132 with my bonuses.
After everyone had gotten back in the game, and our group was made, we had Dan range out to find us something to kill. Jason and Wayne followed at a distance, and I was farther behind as I continued to practice my Conceal and Stealth.
As I was coming around a tree, a mob suddenly popped into my field of vision, not ten feet in front of me. The name over the mob was simply Treasure Hunter, and he was Yellow to me. Thankfully my Conceal and Stealth were activated or the mob would have seen me jump a good five feet in the air. I knew I was invisible, so I took the time to get a better look at the mob.
He was a human, and was wearing a collection of tattered leather clothing. He had a very cool looking black leather duster, a walking stick, and a cowboyesque hat. The satchel hanging over his shoulder was also worn and leather. I couldn’t see any weapons, but anything could have been under that duster. The coolest thing about the mob was the black eye patch over his right eye. I’m not going to lie, Dan was right, the eye patch made him look bad ass.
I remembered that Chance had two separate functions in the game. One was integral in the looting of mobs after killing, and the other one dealt with the spawning of rare mobs. We had seen this take place while we were in the bunny fields outside of Port Town when we were killed for the very first time. And it appeared I was seeing it again here.
I backed up a good twenty feet or so and contacted my group, “Hey guys. I think the Chance Master just struck again.”
“We haven’t killed anything. What are you talking about Alex?” Wayne asked.
I linked them the Treasure Hunter and I heard all three of them gasp. I also sent them a point on the map far enough away, I hoped, from the mob that it wouldn’t aggro them when they appeared. I told the guys to meet me at the point to discuss strategy.
“Dude, that is so bad ass. I totally forgot that your Chance could also affect the way mobs would spawn,” Wayne said.
“It doesn’t seem to work the same way the looting does though. I mean this is only the second time we’ve seen anything that looks like it could be a rare mob,” Jason added.
“The Chance skill creates a diameter, or ‘bubble’ around each character where the chance of a rare spawn increases based on the character’s Chance skill. The bubble for each character increases as the Chance skill increases,” Dan recited from memory. “Since Alex is usually nowhere near mob spawn points, since he doesn’t pull, I am guessing it doesn’t have a chance to work that often. There must have been some random mob that was about to spawn right next to you bro, and it turned into this Treasure Hunter. That’s balltastic.”
“Well obviously we need to kill him. And I don’t see any other mobs around here, so we should be able to just rush the guy. Any objections?” I asked.
“You sure you don’t want to try an experiment first Alex?” Jason asked, smirking while he did.
“Stop trying to get me beat up Allister. Wayne are you ready?”
“Not just yet. Since we have no idea what this guy is going to do to us, lets buff up our resistances.”
That was a good call by Wayne. This guy could be a magic user, and we wanted to have every opportunity we could get to survive the fight. Jason cast all the buffs he had on us, since we had no idea what this guy could do, and then sat for five minutes to regain some of his mana.
When we were all ready, we crept a little closer to the mob and then Wayne ran out at him, yelling “TheClaw is an asshole!”
Dan immediately looked mortified and asked, “Hey, what did I do?”
“It’s my new battle cry before I attack a mob. I thought you would like that one as much as you giggled at my other ones. Now stop pouting and shoot this guy.”
Dan continued to pout, but he did also start shooting. He was too far away to hear Wayne whisper, “Naugha got jokes too bitch.”
The Treasure Hunter did not have any other weapons besides his walking stick, but he was using that to beat on Wayne mercilessly. Jason was keeping up with the heals and after a bit of time I joined into the fight so that my proc wouldn’t pull aggro off of Wayne. We were smart to buff up our resistances, as the mob had an AoE spell that caused fire damage over time, like the poison from the Venomous Rabbits we faced way back when. Only with our resistance the damage wasn’t substantial enough that Jason had to worry about healing the rest of us. After a short time, we killed the Treasure Hunter and Jason began healing himself and me, while Dan handled his own heals.
I looted the mob and found two items on him. I linked both to the guys:
“Well about time. The treasure map sounds cool, but it doesn’t beat not having to watch Naugha fall down repeatedly!” Jason said.
“Hell yeah!” Wayne yelled out in agreement.
Despite the necklace being tradeable, there was no way we weren’t going to give this to Wayne. Jason was right, there were far too many instances where we watched Wayne fall on his butt at night or in the dark dungeons. I looted the Treasure Map and Wayne grabbed the necklace.
“We are still early in the day guys so I am going to activate this Treasure Map unless you would rather just stay out here and kill more wolves.”
“Screw that noise. Hit it Alex!” Dan said.
As soon as I highlighted the map in my inventory by focusing on it, and blinking to activate it, a spot popped up on my map. It looked to be about a thirty-minute trek from our current location. “Do you guys see the location on your maps as well?” I asked.
“Yup, we got it Alex. Doesn’t look too far at all. I say we head over now.” Jason said.
All were in agreement and we made our way toward the location on the map.
We had to stop twice to kill some wandering mobs that were in our way, but otherwise it was an uneventful trip. Just before we arrived at the location indicated by our maps, we stepped out of the forest and into a clearing. And before us was a no-shit castle. And there were definitely people home.
CHAPTER 17
I started walking toward the castle but Dan stopped me with a hand on my forearm. I looked over at him and he shook his head and then nodded toward the castle walls. “Those are archers up there brother. We won’t get far in this clearing if we try to walk across.”
I didn’t have Dan’s eyesight but I believed him. Jason and Wayne started looking around for another way to get closer, as had I, but I didn’t see anything obvious. I had a plan, but I knew it was going to be met by a series of groans.
“Before you all start bitching, and groaning, and complaining, understand that what I say next is going to happen, so maybe just nod your heads now so I can get to it.”
They all knew what I was going to do, but they still let out a collective sigh. Ungrateful bastards.
I decided I wanted the best protection I could possibly get, so I walked back into the forest where there were many shadows, and kneeled on the pine needle floor. Within a couple of seconds, I shrouded myself in shadows just as Stan had instructed, and I was ready to move out. Despite the sun being overhead, and not a cloud in the sky, the world looked a whole lot darker from within my shadows.
I told the guys I was heading in, and they all waved goodbye, although in three separate directions since none of them could actually see me. Because of my bonuses to Conceal and Stealth I was moving at almost normal speed, and my trip across the open clearing went quickly. Thankfully the front gate was open so I did not have to find an alternate means for entering the castle. I entered the castle yard, but didn’t see anyone inside. Since I knew there were people along the walls, I decided to make my way up to the parapets.
Once I was on top of the wall I was able to get a closer look at the archers and select them as targets. Before I even selected the first one, however, I knew this guy wasn’t going to be a part of the living based on the white jaw bone I could see sticking out from beyond his chin. Marking him as a target only confirmed as such, with his name appearing as An Undead Archer, who was Blue to me.
I continued around the top of the wall and counted eight archers total. Four on the North front side of the castle, two on each side of the gate, and two more on the smaller East and West sides of the castle. The outer wall did not continue to cover the south side as the outer wall of the Manor climbed above the wall itself and would have been impossible to get over. I intended to inspect the outside of the southern portion, to look for a possible entry way for my group, but first I linked the mob to my group.
“Oh hell yes! I have been waiting to use this spell!” Jason yelled out as soon as he saw the mob’s identification. I remembered back when we were coming up with our characters that Jason wanted to be able to go out killing undead at some point. This was going to be his first chance.
“I’m going to scout some more guys. The front gate may be open, but I don’t think we could take eight archers lighting into us all at one time. The wall doesn’t go around the southern side since the manor house’s outer wall makes up that portion. We couldn’t possibly scale that anyhow, but maybe there is another way in,” I told the group.
They all murmured their understanding and agreement and I headed back out to investigate the manor’s outer wall. I turned the corner and was immediately disappointed.
That’s all it was. A wall. No windows, no vents near the bottom, no flag poles, just a four story sheer wall. And there was nothing I, or my teammates, were going to be able to do to get through that wall.
As I looked around some more I noticed a slight difference in the ground around me. It was subtle, but definitely there. A portion of the grass seemed to be a little more robust in the clearing than the surrounding vegetation. And it appeared to go in a straight line from the manor wall to the tree line of the forest. I had my suspicions, but I called the guys together in that area of the forest to huddle up.
Once they arrived I showed them what I had seen, and Dan immediately saw what I meant and seemed to catch on to what I suspected. “According to my map Alex, there is a water source south of us. Same direction as the line.”
Wayne looked at the wall, the ground, the forest, back to the wall, and then groaned loudly. “S
eriously, the old going through the sewers trick?”
“It is a time tested tactic my large friend. And speaking of which, let’s hope it’s accessible to us two legged type. Although Wayne you may have to hands and knees it anyhow.”
Wayne did not look happy, and Jason even less so. But we headed to the water Dan had seen on his map. The going was quick as there was a bit of a slope down ward as we headed away from the castle. After 15 minutes we arrived at the water Dan saw on his map, which turned out to be a lake and not a river.
But there was no sewer grate, or overflow. I had been mistaken in my estimation. What there was, instead, was a cave entrance big enough to sail a small boat inside. And like the castle, this entrance was guarded. Only this time they weren’t archers, but sentries. The Undead Guards were also Blue to me.
“Now this is something I can get behind. No little baby sewers for Naugha, no sir. I can walk through that entrance no problem.”
“Well I suggest we see what is on the other side of that cave’s mouth then. Dan, grab em and bring em here. I don’t want to take the chance that there are more inside the cave. I mean I could Stealth my way over there and look, but I think you guys are done waiting for action.”
“Amen to that brother. I am grabbing them now. And Naugha, don’t be a dick with the battle cries. They hurt my feelings.”
As Dan headed off, I looked over to Jason, who was itching to cast some damage. “When it hits 50 percent Allister, hit it with the fury. I have a feeling it is going to do some damage and I don’t want Wayne to lose aggro.” Jason nodded his head in agreement, but I could tell he didn’t want to wait that long.
Dan quickly arrived with the two mobs and we fell into our normal routine of Wayne getting aggro on both before we began lighting into the mobs. As the first mob approached the 50 percent mark Jason asked, “Now Alex?”
“Now Allister!”
And with that, Jason got to cast his Banish Undead spell for the first time. And thank goodness he waited until the mob was at 50 percent health. Because it went from 50 to 15, in one shot! We finished off the first one quickly, and started in on the second. Jason again was ready with the undead damage spell and blasted the mob with a similar effect.
Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 Page 21
