Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1

by Joshua W. Nelson

  “I do believe we have a new hitter in the group lads! Allister just decimated those mobs!” Wayne yelled out while giving Jason a high five.

  “I’m not going to lie to you guys. I love being the healer for our group. But sometimes it just feels good to put the beat down on something,” Jason said while smiling broadly.

  I looted the two mobs and was happy to find that they were stacked with cash. Each one had close to a gold piece. Neither of them had any items to loot though.

  “Well that was terribly uneventful, but we got some decent cash out of them. So let’s go see what is inside that cave boys,” I said while making my way over to the cave entrance.

  “Let me scout first, just to make sure there aren’t like 50 mobs waiting around the corner,” I said while activating my Conceal/Stealth.

  I didn’t expect to find a room full of mobs, and thankfully I was right. Instead there was a small dock with a couple of row boats tied to the end, and a couple of more guards next to the dock. I ventured further in and found patrols of two guards moving through the tunnels of the cave. They didn’t overlap, except through line of sight, and they moved slower than you would expect most guards to move around. I guessed this was largely in part due to their undead status. Shambling zombies and all that.

  This definitely looked doable for our group, and I relayed the information to the guys. I told them to wait by the entrance of the cave, and I would tell Dan when to pull the two by the dock. Once I was sure the first roving patrol was farthest away from the stationary dock guards, I told Dan to engage. After firing off an arrow, Dan pulled the mobs to the entrance of the cave where Wayne began his Tanking duties. By the time I got back to them, the first mob was down and they were working on the second one. Jason’s blasts were obviously doing some serious damage.

  “Those spells hurting your mana Allister?” I asked.

  “Not even close Alex. They cost just a little bit more than my strongest heal. So I am actually saving mana by casting them and making it so Naugha doesn’t have to fight so long.”

  We rarely had to sit and let Jason regenerate his mana, as he had plenty of time between heals on Wayne. But we would be able to move even faster now that Jason could do so much damage. Jenny would likely be able to put a serious hurting on these mobs as well being a Paladin. I said as much to our group.

  “I’ll never admit this openly, but with a spell like that, I wouldn’t be able to take aggro from her at all against mobs like these. Even with my better weapon, gear, and stats. I’m just happy Allister hasn’t pulled it from me. These guys do pack a solid punch, and I don’t think Allister would be able to get another hit off.”

  I looted the two corpses and found good cash on them again, but still no items. Even if we didn’t find any items on the undead mobs, the money was definitely worth the effort.

  I thought about how we would move through the cave complex quickly. I didn’t want to pull four mobs, which could happen if we pulled at the wrong time of a patrol. But I also needed to be there for the loot. I suggested that I stay out to watch the patrols and tell Dan when to pull. When he did I would run in and loot the last mobs that had been killed, and then immediately run back out to track the patrols. This seemed to work for everyone.

  And work well it did. Over the next hour we cleared out the entire cave, going through 24 mobs in total, pulled in twos. At no point was there danger of anyone dying. We had become a solid team for sure. The last two mobs we killed, the guards for a solid looking oak door, went down just as easy, but actually did have an item to loot. The keys for said door.

  So with that, we unlocked the door, and I made my way up the stairs using my Blacksuit. I came out into an opulent bedroom. However, I didn’t come in through a door, but a book case. It appears the cave exit was a secret escape for whoever lived here previously. The bedroom didn’t give me any indication as to who that might be, as the room was vacant. Seeing it to be mildly safe, I told the guys to join me in the bedroom.

  I remembered thinking that I wanted some variety in the game play, as I hoped that it wouldn’t just be dungeon after dungeon, so I was excited by this idea of fighting in a castle. We would need to go through and clear all the rooms on our way to wherever we were going in order to find the treasure. I told the guys my thoughts and they were in agreement. This time there was a map of the castle, but I was inclined to use Dan’s brain still to track where we had and had not gone.

  “Dan, you are up buddy. Use that noggin of yours to find us the quickest route to clear this floor of the castle,” I told Dan.

  “Alex, can you do your thing and scout out the hallways first, I don’t want to run into a bunch of mobs coming around a corner,” Dan said.

  I was happy that the guys were realizing the value of my skill finally, and I quickly headed out into the halls with my Conceal/Stealth activated. There were roving patrols around the halls, but all of the doors to the bedrooms were closed. I realized we were on the bottom floor of the castle and that there was at least one more floor for us to go up to. The first floor seemed to take up the first two stories, and the second floor made up the third. I was guessing there must be some type of large room at the top of the castle, where we would fight the big boss.

  We decided to take out the hallway patrols first, following the same tactics we used previously. Again, none of the guards had any items, but had decent money on themselves.

  Once we took out the guards we started going room to room, and fighting any and all mobs that were in the bedrooms. Each hallway, of which there were three, had six rooms. We found three and two rooms occupied on the shorter hallways to the east and west, and four rooms occupied on the long southern hallway. The northern facing wall was a large entryway with a staircase running up to the second floor. There were no rooms in this area, but we did find four guards in that area, who did patrols. We took them out prior to hitting up the rooms.

  Each mob in the rooms was a singleton, and they were all casters. They didn’t have a high armor class, nor a high Constitution, but they packed a wallop with their spells. Jason had buffed us against disease and poison, what we figured an undead caster might use, but they were still able to land some damage over time spells and strong direct damage spells. Wayne was taking the brunt of these, and could have been in some danger if it weren’t for Jason’s Banish Undead spell. It didn’t hit as hard as against the guards, as the casters likely had some resistance, but due to their limited hit points, it tended to do the same amount of damage. We were lucky again to have a Cleric in our group who was able to cast the Undead spell. Without that, our crawl through the castle would have taken much longer, with Jason needing to regenerate mana frequently for heals.

  The other great part about our crawl through the bottom floor was the loot. Each caster dropped an article of clothing, of which none of us could wear due to them being caster only, and a number of spell scrolls. These tended to be of the dark sciences, so nothing that Dan or Jason could use, but my merchant eye was looking at them quite critically with an eye toward making us some more money. The only problem was that there were no Dark casters in Port Town. And the closest dark city would be a two-day walk. I decided I would cross that bridge when I got to it.

  After clearing the bottom floor, I went up the stairs using my invisibility, this time with my Blacksuit, and scouted out the second floor. Instead of long hallways with adjacent rooms, this time I found four large rooms at the corners of the floor. Upon further investigation, there was a large sitting room, a laboratory, a library, and a dining room. Within each of these rooms was one mob, again what looked like a caster, but each were Yellow. Mini-bosses. I told the guys to come up the stairs and let them know what I had found. Having no idea what we would encounter inside each room, I told the guys we should just work counter clockwise. Dining room, sitting room, laboratory, and finally the library. Since no one had a better idea we made our way to the dining room.

  Just outside the room, Jason refreshed our bu
ffs, and I headed in first with my Blacksuit on to make sure we weren’t missing anything. The mob, an Undead Diner, was sitting at the head of the table with a plate of rotted food in front of him. Often I love the realism of this game, but at this moment, smelling the decaying mob and the rotten food, and my sudden urge to vomit, made me like that realism a little less.

  Seeing no surprises, Wayne ran in and attacked the Diner. I waited patiently for Wayne to acquire aggro, and then launched myself at the mob.

  I hit the mob for a massive critical and a message flashed across my screen. I minimized the window quickly and got back into the fight. Now was not the time to be reading system messages. Not to mention my Critical Strike and my dagger’s proc had gone off simultaneously, so I had pulled aggro for the briefest of moments. And despite having no weapon, this Diner was hitting like a truck. Thankfully he didn’t cast any of his Dark damage spells on me. Wayne had been the only one to be a recipient of those baddies.

  Once the mob got to 50 percent, we saw him launch a spell that filled up the room. And with a flourish, the other 10 seats along the table were suddenly filled with Undead Diners, although these were all green to us. I disengaged and immediately started attacking one of them. Within 10 seconds he was dead. This was doable. “Dan, cast snare on the first four on that side and start hitting them with arrows, they are crazy weak. I will take out four on this side. Allister, one shot will probably kill these guys. Hit the two on the end with a Banish. Stay alive brother Naugha.”

  Dan did as I instructed and started taking down the mobs on his side. Jason turned and cast his spell and immediately one at the end of the table was gone. Jason turned and did the same to the other one at the end of the table. I could see he had the Naugha madness in his eyes and that he was about to start decimating the rest when Wayne yelled, “Could really use a heal here Allister!”

  “Sorry!” Jason yelled and went back to his healing duties. “I got the Eye of Naugha for a second there, my bad!”

  “Eye of Naugha, that’s awesome! I’m going to write AltCon and tell them to incorporate that into the game. Give you some kind of strength and crazy buff. Although they haven’t listened to any of my other suggestions for things that should be in the game, so I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Dan said.

  Someone had to ask it. “What else did you suggest Dan?”

  “Street signs in Port Town so you can give people directions to places,” Dan said.

  “That’s actually quite a good idea Dan,” I said.

  “Yeah. That and a mechanical riding bull and a magic fingers bed for the tavern,” Dan added.

  “Ahh, there is the Dan we know and love,” Jason said.

  “Awe, thanks Alligator, I didn’t know you cared.”

  We finished off the mobs at the table with relative ease and got back to ripping into the primary Diner. At 35 percent Jason unleashed a Banish on the mob and it dropped to 20 percent. After that it was just a matter of time before we killed the guy. But Wayne was pretty low on health, and Jason definitely needed to regenerate some mana.

  I went over and looted the mob and found a high quality robe, and two Dark spells. I linked the robe to the guys:

  “Guys, I am going to be able to sell this for a pretty penny to some Dark Caster once we get out of here. As you can see, it is tradeable.”

  “Man, that is awesome. I wish it was usable by an Enchanter though. I bet Timmy would love that thing,” Wayne said.

  “Timmy, huh?” Jason asked.

  Wayne started blushing again and said, “Um, well, that is just what Jenny calls him. You know. When we talk about strategy.”

  Saving Wayne from his fate, I suggested we head over toward the sitting room so I could scout it out while Jason regenerated his mana.

  While Jason was recovering his mana, I scoped out the next room. It was very similar to the dining room in that there was one mob inside, an Undead Guest, and a lot of empty seats. It looked like we would be facing something similar to what we encountered in the dining room. I was heading back out to the hallway to inform the rest of the guys about what I found when I noticed the blinking icon at the bottom of my vision telling me I had a system message waiting.

  I opened up the icon and saw the below message:

  You have learned a new skill. You have learned Disembowel.

  Only a Rogue with the Blacksuit skill can get close enough to a target to inflict true damage. With no resistance, the Rogue easily cuts deep into the belly of the beast.

  Effect: Successful Disembowel will deliver a 4X Critical Strike on an opponent. Success depends on the player’s Dexterity and Chance.

  I had never tried attacking someone while my Blacksuit was activated. I still found it easier to use Conceal and Stealth, as I still had to concentrate before my Blacksuit became active. The Backstab damage I earned from using those two skills was already giving me a 2X modifier on my Critical Strike. But with Disembowel I could deal some serious damage. I might even be able to take on a mob solo if I was lucky with my first strike.

  I couldn’t tell the guys about my new skill without giving away my Blacksuit skill. And in turn, that would give away my secret quest. I was going to have to be very careful with attacking while covered in my Blacksuit. It would be near impossible for Wayne to take aggro from me if I had a successful Disembowel and my dagger proc’ed multiple times from the outset.

  Once Jason’s mana was close to full we made our way into the sitting room. We engaged the Undead Guest and followed the same routine. There were no surprises, with a new set of mobs appearing at 50 percent. I found the lack of creativity boring, but I wasn’t going to complain. At least this time we knew where to position ourselves before the new mobs spawned and we cleared them out quickly. This time though, there was a different robe that dropped and two more spells. Wayne was going to get quite a few hugs after he delivered these goods.

  “Check this out guys!” I said, while linking the item to them.

  “There are also two Enchanter only spells Wayne. You get to deliver these to Jenny’s group. She may have to fight Tim off of you to give you the appropriate hugs!” I said to Wayne.

  “Shut up Alex,” Wayne said, but he was all smiles. “What level are the spells?”

  “Well, one of them is level 12 and is an improved Charm and the other is level 15. And that one is going to make everyone drool. It’s a Haste spell.”

  With a haste spell, those characters that used weapons to fight were given a bonus to their weapons speed. If you normally swung your hammer once every two seconds, with a haste spell, depending on the modifier, you could look at swinging once every one second. With weapons like daggers, where you are already swinging almost constantly, adding a Haste buff just made you a complete power house.

  “Tim will shit when he sees those. And you know he will argue that the robe is tradeable so we shouldn’t just give it to him,” Jason added.

  “That’s why I am sending Wayne. He’s big enough that he won’t argue.”

  Everyone chuckled at that. I was happy we were going to be able to help out our teammates. I wish we could find some upgrades for Kaitlin, but patience is a virtue I never learned as a youth.

  The only variation in the next two rooms came in the laboratory. Instead of more Undead Lab Assistants, it was 12 Undead Rats that spawned and attacked. Dan screamed like a little girl when they first popped up and then started shooting them with no sense of order. We could all hear his screams of, “I hate rats! I hate, hate, hate rats! Get them off me, please!” Wayne almost lost aggro he was laughing so hard.

  We also got two more robes, and two spells per robe. Each room’s robe was for a specific type of character. So we got a robe for Wizard only and one for Elementalist. Also two spells for each Class. We were going to be drowning in cash by the time I was done selling all of these.

  After we cleared all of the rooms, we found the expected stair case leading up to the next level in the library. We had been getting solid experience fro
m the outset and our experience bars were steadily moving through level 14. Before we went up the stair case I scouted the area, using my Blacksuit, as I had determined to practice more and use Conceal/Stealth only in those times when I very quickly needed to switch to an invisible state.

  Once I reached the top of the stairs I found what looked like a throne room. How did I know? The big chair kind of gave it away. And if that wasn’t enough, the Red mob sitting in the chair, an Undead Regent, really gave it away.

  We had never taken on a Red mob. At least not done so and won. So I was worried what this guy could do to us. Personally, I was tempted to just farm the castle until we reached level 15 and then see how it looked. I relayed this to my group.

  But the boys were hearing none of that. Dan, as was par for the course with TheClaw, made some reference to my man hood and my small hands. Jason, who was far more diplomatic, asked if I was uncomfortable wearing women’s little clothes. Admittedly, it took me a second to figure out that he was asking if I had my panties in a bunch. Wayne was by far the clearest and most concise. He just simply looked over at me and shook his head.

  Then he said, “Pussy.”

  “Fine! But no complaints if we all get sent back to Port Town if this goes wrong!”

  We buffed with everything we had. Which wasn’t much, but every little bit was going to help. We hoped.

  As we crossed the threshold of the room, the Undead Regent stood from the throne. We stopped immediately. It appeared we weren’t quite in his aggro range yet, as he made no move to advance. But Wayne and I both noticed the same things and vocalized our observations.

  “He’s no caster. Look at that armor. This guy is a warrior,” I said.

  “Forget the armor, look at that hammer. Now that is a weapon. Gods, I hope that is a lootable item,” Wayne responded. And he was right, the war hammer the Regent had in his hand looked like it could put a serious dent in all of us.