“What were you doing at that camp, Devin? Who are you working for? Who are you really?” De4th asked him.
Devin tried to brush off these questions like he did the last time with answers like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and “I just stumbled upon the camp.” However, De4th was having none of that – he most likely was expecting these kinds of answers because he was quick to reply.
“If you don’t give me some truthful answers soon, we are going to have to kill you. You’ve technically been in combat since you arrived, so you haven’t been able to send any messages – which means no one knows you are here. We need to make sure it stays that way because we don’t need anyone else knowing where we are – although we do appreciate you showing us where the other camp was located. Nothing personal, but if you don’t give us a reason not to, we’ll have to get rid of you, so the word doesn’t get out. You have five minutes – we have things we need to get to.” Devin could tell De4thfrmbeh1nd was serious this time.
Devin thought about it for a couple of minutes. What would happen if I told them the truth? Would the Main System AI shut us down if we shared what happened to us – or is this the reason I can communicate with them now? If I don’t tell them they’ll kill me – but if I tell them the truth they might not believe me and kill me anyway. The way I see it, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I can’t afford to respawn right now, so I’ve got nothing to lose – but if they believe me there is a slight chance they may actually be able to help. With his mind made up, he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind: “I’m not actually a player…”
All four of the Reckless players just stared at him with various expressions on their faces – from confusion, disbelief, and impatience. The last one was from De4thfrmbeh1nd who thought he was playing around again and making things up therefore wasting his time. “Stop jerking us around – you’re clearly a player. Who else would you be?”
“Well, I actually used to be a player – but I haven’t been one for the last couple of months. You see, about nine months ago…” Devin began telling the story of what had happened to them. As he was recounting how they had first started as new players in Briarwood – with Devin a Fighter and Krista a Healer – he couldn’t believe how far they had come since then. All they wanted to do was have fun playing a game together as they always had – now they were a part of the game.
When he got to the part where they entered the transporter at the end of the Goblin Cave, he faltered a little in his recounting. It wasn’t enough just having the knowledge that they had died – telling other people made it all come back hard. It hit him with more emotion now than it did when he first learned about it – maybe he hadn’t fully come to terms with the situation. Anyway, once he was passed that part, he was able to pull himself together and recounted how they had taken over the dungeon from the former dungeon AI.
“Krista is actually the one in charge of the dungeon – I’m just the Dungeon Upgradable Mobile Boss. At first, I started back at level 1 and gained experience from those that I had killed. I could choose whatever race and class that had been previously killed in the dungeon and there was no penalty to respawn as a different combination. This all worked great until Krista hit Dungeon Level 5 – which is where the Dungeon Core event came in. We had 48 hours until everything got posted to the patch notes and made us a target for the whole of Glendaria. While I lured the monsters back to the dungeon, Krista created the new floor to house the Dungeon Core and new Guardian. You can probably guess the rest from there.”
During his entire recounting and explanation, the four guild members quietly watched him without saying a word. As he finished, silence descended upon the tent for a long five minutes. As if emerging from a sleep, De4th started moving again and asked, “How did they steal the Dungeon Core?”
Devin was reluctant to talk about specifics, but he was able to at least tell them something, “We had a problem with our Guardian, Violette. She ended up being unstable of mind and consequentially allowed them to take it without a fight – it was essentially out of our control. I wasn’t there at the time and when I learned what happened I immediately went in search of the Core.”
De4th considered this and looked at his guildmates for a couple of minutes. They must have been communicating over Guild Chat because they seemed to reach a consensus without uttering anything out loud. They all turned back to Devin, eyeing him again as if to confirm what decision they had reached. Suddenly, De4th broke the silence permeating the tent, “We would like to help you get the Dungeon Core back to the dungeon. We don’t want it in the hands of anyone, especially one of the most powerful guilds in the game.”
Devin inwardly let out a sigh of relief, keeping stoic on the outside. Maybe together we can make this work. I don’t trust them completely but at least they haven’t killed me yet – hopefully that is a good sign. “What help can you give me?”
“First, how did you know where the Divine Truth camp was located? We’ve been trying to track them for days and it has been near impossible to pin them down,” Sh1fty responded.
“I have some sort of connection to the Core that almost…pulls me in the correct direction. Before your guys took me, I was trying to enter the camp in order to further pinpoint where the Dungeon Core was precisely located. I know it is in there, but I couldn’t tell from the outside exactly what tent it was in.”
“That could work, for what I have in mind – now that we know where the camp is we can track it to their next destination and infiltrate them tonight. We don’t have the forces to take them on directly, but we do have some of the best stealth players in the game. We can make it into their camp undetected, but we wouldn’t be able to search all of the tents. That’s where you come in – when you get far enough in you can point us in the right direction. After that it’ll be an easy snatch n’ grab and we’ll use some teleport scrolls to get us out of there before all the shit hits the fan,” Sh1fty explained.
“Sounds like a plan to me…uh…can you untie me now?”
Chapter 4
“Alright muthafuckas, you know the plan – we’ll go in as a small team, locate this bitch, snatch that shit before anyone knows we’re there, and port out while they’re still getting their dicks together.” Sh1fty tended to be quite crass just before a job or mission. That didn’t mean he wasn’t one of the best Thieves you could find in the game; it was just the way he got his nerves out. And sometimes it was quite humorous with what he would come up with.
De4thfrmbeh1nd was playing second fiddle to Sh1fty on this mission – although he was the guild leader his lieutenants all had their specialties. This was a situation where having their premier Thief in charge was best for what they wanted to accomplish. In De4ths’ opinion, there wasn’t anyone better when you needed something stolen without anyone the wiser. He just had a knack for thieving – it was above and beyond the basic abilities that came with the class.
Anyone could Stealth and Pickpocket an unsuspecting merchant – Sh1fty took it to a whole new level. Once, De4th remembered, when someone from a rival guild killed one of their low-level guildies for no reason, Sh1fty decided to get revenge. Late that night, he climbed the outside of their guild house, entered the attic, made his way around the entire place while everyone was asleep, and stole everything he could fit into his bag. Weapons, armor, clothing, decorative statues, small pieces of furniture, rugs, banners, and even some cookware they had in their kitchen made their way into his oversized bag. He could have kept it and sold it but he “returned” it in a way to deliver a message – don’t fuck with him and his.
The next day, the rival guild (who went by Terror Squad) found all their stuff in their house gone and a short note skewered to the front door by a small stiletto knife. All that the note said was, “Roof – DFWU (Don’t Fuck With Us)”. When the various members of Terror Squad who were inside at that moment stepped outside, they found all their different pieces of equipment, décor, and even cookw
are attached and hanging off the side of the roof. They were the laughingstock of the city for many months afterword and they could never pin down exactly who had done it.
So De4th trusted Sh1fty to lead this mission – if anyone could succeed it would be him. He chose to come along as well because as an Assassin he had a high Stealth skill as well and would work well as backup if it came to a fight. He wasn’t going to let something this important be delegated to one of his lower-ranked guild members. If they didn’t accomplish their mission, then it wouldn’t be because they didn’t use all their best people.
Along with Sh1fty and De4thfrmbeh1nd, they were bringing along Strang3r – who was one of the top Rangers in the game – and another Ranger by the name of Gahbriyelle. Gahbriyelle was a short, waifish-looking slip of a blonde-haired elf girl whom De4th had recruited soon after they had formed the guild. Both Rangers were expert marksmen/markswomen that also had a nearly maxed out Stealth skill – which made sense because they were an advanced form of the Rogue class. He trusted them all with his “virtual” life to follow the plan and get the job done no matter what. And then there was Devin.
De4th still wasn’t sure what to think about Devin – his story was so crazy that it could almost be the truth. He’d have to do some research offline later when he had the time and look up FIPOD deaths in the news. He hadn’t heard of any deaths – but then again, he wasn’t offline that often either. Honestly, De4th still didn’t trust Devin but would use him if he was able to lead them to the Dungeon Core – he certainly seemed like he knew where he was going.
The next day after his revelation, Devin had led the Reckless guild in the direction he sensed the Dungeon Core was heading toward. All day, De4th was crossing his fingers hoping that they had put their trust in the right person – they couldn’t afford to lose a day of tracking because they might not be able to catch back up. At first, Devin had led them in a completely different direction from where all their experienced trackers and informers had said the Divine Truth camp was heading. After a couple of hours, however, they realized that they were on the right track when they began to see small signs leftover from a large party passing through. By nightfall, they had caught up enough that they could easily get from the Reckless camp to the Divine Truth camp in as little as 20 minutes.
After waiting for nightfall, the five party members Stealthed and crept close to the camp, bypassing four different scouts posted along the perimeter. They must have had some lower-level members of their guild keeping watch because their Stealth skill was so low they weren’t able to see their party as they snuck past. As they got to the edge of the camp and observed the alert sentries standing equidistant from each other along the perimeter, Sh1fty had given his “rousing” speech to the party through party chat.
Which was another unusual and confusing aspect of Devin’s story – if he was a mob he shouldn’t be able to join a party with them. There were times during the game when an NPC would join a group doing a quest, either as someone they had to protect or as someone who would help them get through a difficult part. De4th had never heard of a mob joining a party – he thought that would have been talked about it if had ever happened. Well, it’s too late now to second-guess myself; we’ll just have to roll with it for now.
While waiting for Sh1fty to give the OK for them to move in, De4th got his first real look at the Divine Truth camp. Even though he got a report from his Rangers last night on how many tents there were, he was still amazed on how big the camp was. Hopefully Devin really can pinpoint where the Core is – there is no way we could search all these tents. I suspect that it is going to be in one of the larger guild tents in the center, but I’d rather not go in those if it isn’t.
Even though he was waiting for it, he was still startled out of his own thoughts as Sh1fty signaled for them to move in. A half step behind the others, he followed along a slow pace, constantly watching out for threats on all sides. Just because they had visible sentries didn’t mean that there weren’t additional Stealthed players keeping watch for groups such as his. That’s what he would have done if he was in their place – but perhaps their top-guild standing gave them too much confidence. Either way, they made it inside the tents without raising an alarm or gaining any notice.
Since they entered from the center of the north side of the camp, it was no surprise when he saw Devin leading the way south toward the big guild tents in the center. Although it was pretty much what he expected, De4th was worried that there would be way too many players inside to successfully steal the Core and – this was the most important part – get away safely. He’d have to see what Sh1fty said since this was his operation.
As they cautiously made their way past the last row of tents surrounding the larger guild ones, Devin suddenly stopped, turned to the right, and stared at one of the crafting tents they had just passed. Ashes, bits of metal, and scorch marks marred the ground outside of the tent which De4th assumed must be a portable forge for those with the Blacksmithing profession. He looked inquisitively at Devin, and asked Devin through party chat, “What is it?”
“I think the Core is in that tent – I was expecting it to be in one of the big tents in the center of the camp, but my sense is pulling me in this direction,” Devin replied. Without asking, he slowly started to circle around the tent as if confirming his suspicion. “Yep, it’s definitely in there. What’s the plan?”
De4th looked at Sh1fty, ready for instruction – this was his show. “Wait here, I’m just going to peek inside and figure out what the hell we’re dealing with here. Be prepared to run if this is a trap – no need for all of us to get fucked,” as usual, Sh1fty knew how to diffuse a stressful situation. Slinking further into the shadows of a nearby tent, the rest of the party watched as the Thief cautiously inched his way forward toward the side of the tent. At this distance, it was hard to see him despite being in the same party – his Stealth skill was just that high.
Sh1fty pulled a small, razor-sharp implement from his bag and slowly pressed it against the fabric of the tent in front of him. It was only because of their heightened attention toward what he was doing that they heard the barest whisper of cutting cloth – which was mostly drowned out by the normal nighttime camp sounds emanating from around them. De4th observed Sh1fty carefully placing his eye to the hole he had just made and stood silently for almost a minute before pulling away.
“Those smart sons-of-bitches set a pretty decent trap in there. First of all, that’s not a crafting station – my guess is they made it look that way from the outside so that nobody would look for the Dungeon Core there. There is no forge inside, just a whole lot of guards surrounding some unassuming crates stored in the middle of the tent. From my count, it looks as though there are six high-level players in there – a Cleric, a Wizard, two Commanders, and two Assassins. It looks like they are getting bored waiting around doing nothing – I know if I was standing around night after night doing nothing I’d lose my shit. It’s probably only the importance of what they are doing that is keeping them even relatively alert.
“They’re placed around the tent almost equally – most likely to prevent them all from being hit by an AOE in the event someone attacked them. The two stealthers are by the entrance, the two tanks are near the center of the tent on either side, and the healer and caster are near the back. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sneak in and steal it – their attention is too focused on it to be able to snatch and grab. It’s in a crate, so first I’d have to figure out which one it is in, open it up, and then close it again without making noise or drawing attention. Not going to happen. It’s a tall fucking order but we’ll have to take them all out if we’re going to have any chance of this succeeding. Now, I have a plan, but you’ll all have to do what I tell you if we’re going to get this shit done right,” he looked right at Devin when he said that last part.
“I want this even more than you – I’ll follow your orders since you seem to know what you’re doing,” Devin defensi
vely replied. Giving an almost imperceptible nod in his direction, Sh1fty quickly outlined his plan to the group. Nodding his own head in approval, De4th felt more confident in their chances the more he heard. If everything goes even halfway well, this plan might actually work.
Chapter 5
Devin stood by the front of the “crafting” tent, just behind the man with the plan, Sh1fty. He was just now starting to get anxious – it was literally do or die time now. Based on how far away they were from the dungeon, this would probably be their only chance to get the Dungeon Core back. He gripped the Serpent’s Fangs harder, somehow noticing for the first time that he was sweating profusely from nervousness. Such realism in this game – crap, I’ve got to start paying attention or I might end up missing the cue, he chastised himself.
Just as he thought this, he saw De4th – who was on the other side of the entrance – slowly start to creep around the tent flap in full Stealth. As if synchronized, Sh1fty mirrored his movements and Devin followed on his heels. Both the guild leader and the Thief entered the flap at the same time and Devin was relieved that there was no alarm raised as they passed within.
Devin’s first glance at the inside of the tent showed him essentially what Sh1fty had reported earlier. Toward the back he could see the Wizard in flashy prismatic robes and the Cleric in all-white robes standing near opposite corners of the rectangular tent. About halfway up, two Commanders in full gleaming plate armor stood facing the pile of crates in the middle. That left the two Assassins – who looked particularly deadly in all black leather – standing near the front corners of the tent where they entered. Even with the quick glimpse that Devin had, he could tell that they were all bored and paying as little attention as possible. Everyone, except for the Commander on his right, had vacant expressions – most likely attributed to looking at menus, status screens, or chat screens.
Dungeon Guild: A LitRPG Dungeon Core Adventure (Glendaria Awakens Trilogy Book 3) Page 3
