The initial draw of cultists was by far the largest, and the subsequent ones were significantly easier to deal with. Rakkan, Galanis’ group and Aegis’ group were not necessarily working together, but rather the other groups were taking advantage of Aegis’ lure and each group took out the cultists as they were distracted.

Aegis was torn between being defensively smart and dodging the strikes completely, and taking the hits on purpose to gain shield mastery experience. Rakkan consistently positioned himself behind Aegis anytime he wasn’t backed up against a wall to cover him, but he didn’t speak a word to them beyond his initial sentence.

When the following battle ended, all three groups of players found themselves catching their breath in the entry hall of the keep. It was dimly lit by a few torches hanging on hooks that were bolted into the walls, as well as the little bit of light that beamed in through the open doorway. The stonework appeared darker on the inside than it was outside, giving the keep a grim atmosphere with a musky smell mixed in with the scent of the moss hanging off of the walls and ceiling.

The keep looked aged but there were plenty of crates, barrels, sacks and furniture scattered about that had been clearly placed recently by the cultists. It didn’t occur to Aegis initially, but once the battle had subsided he watched as Galanis’ group members not only looted the monster drops, but started digging through the crates and barrels stacked around the building up against the walls and pillars.

Aegis, having picked up on the fact that Lina seemed to know more about the game than she was letting on, turned his attention to her to see if she’d react in a similar way, but she was busy looking down the various corridors that lead out of the entry hall. Using her as an example, he decided not to bother with the crate looting for the time being and joined her.

Ahead of them was a large staircase leading up to the second floor of the keep, with doorless archways flanking the base of it leading into more rooms on the lower level, and two long hallways leading to the left and right.

“No staircase going downward to a dungeon.” Lina commented as Aegis walked closer, Darkshot following behind him.

“As fun as this is, we’re going to be heading up now. I assume the boss man is on the top floor of the keep, that’s where I’d be. I’d ask that, just in case, you don’t follow us.” Galanis awkwardly smiled at Aegis.

“That’s fine, we’re heading down, wherever that might be.” Aegis replied dismissively. He watched Galanis’ group climb the staircase, some members giving nods of appreciation before parting, but Rakkan remained standing on the floor with them, staring at them.

“You going up too?” Aegis asked.

“Nah.” Rakkan shrugged. “Lure’s good for experience.” He motioned to Aegis’ shield.

“This guy’s using us.” Darkshot replied using the party interface. “Can’t you do the stabby thing, Lina?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea… He is a fighter class player and he’s really good, he was grinding here by himself.” Lina replied without making eye contact with him.

“You’ve been here for awhile?” Aegis asked him. He returned a half-hearted shrug. “Know where the basement is?” Aegis asked, Rakkan nodded in the direction of the right corridor. “Thanks.” Aegis replied.

“Move slowly.” Lina whispered to Aegis as he walked forward down the hallway. There were several dimly lit rooms lining the corridor, a few had windows that let in the sunlight. They had signs of having been recently occupied, but the lure had already taken care of that.

“Should we bother looting that stuff?” Aegis motioned to a set of cards sitting on a table in one of the rooms.

“You can but, it’s not worth much, and it takes up a lot of inventory space. Best to just fill up on the monster drops, unless you find a cool furniture item or something you want to steal, I guess. Or you need food. Sometimes you get lucky-” Lina was explaining, but before she could finish both Aegis and Darkshot had split up into different rooms and started stuffing anything with an item card into their inventories. Aegis got a few goblets, a set of playing cards, dice, and an empty satchel, while Darkshot got a similar haul before returning to the corridor where Lina and Rakkan just stared at them from.

Without a word, Aegis walked onward as if nothing had happened, and the next doorway on their left led to a narrow staircase going downward into pitch black darkness. Rakkan pointed through the doorway at the stairs as if it wasn’t already obvious that it led to the basement.

“Do you know what enemies are down there? Anything we should look out for?” Aegis asked him, he shrugged back with an unsure look, and the group could suddenly hear the sounds of footsteps making their way up the stairs. Aegis positioned himself in the doorway while everyone else readied their weapons, waiting for the two sets of feet to reach the top.

They got closer and louder as the sound echoed off the stairwell walls, but just when it’d seem they’d come into view out of the darkness, the sounds stopped, and there was a loud whooshing noise. Aegis wasn’t immediately sure what it meant, but it sounded familiar, and he realized too late where he’d heard it before.

Rather than running up the last steps, the two approaching creatures had shifted into a shadowy mist and flew along the top of the staircase ceiling, darting out of the stairwell above Aegis and landing behind him in clouds of smoke. As they landed they materialized their arms and daggers while lunging at Aegis. He spun around to try and block them, only managing to block one dagger while the other sunk into his right shoulder with a painful stabbing sensation surging through his body..

You take 34 Shadow Damage.

You take 81 Shadow Damage.

Aegis quickly jumped away from them to recompose himself, but they shifted once more just as Rakkan slashed his sword down on where they had been standing, and their mist-like forms warped around his blade.

“Shadow Assassins!” Aegis shouted, as if it wasn’t already obvious what they were. They shifted quickly around Aegis again, one over his shoulder and the other between his legs, both arriving behind him. Darkshot drew an arrow and tried firing it into the mist where he imagined the head of the creature would be, but the arrow passed right through it. As they began to materialize their blades again to strike, Aegis tried to spin around once more to block it, again only managing to block one of the two hits.

You take 86 Shadow Damage.

You take 29 Shadow Damage.

In that time, rather than attacking, Lina ran to the nearest flickering torch that hung on the wall and yanked it off, turning to rush to Aegis’ aid.

“You can only hit them when they’re attacking, or use light to break that skill!” Lina shouted as she rushed forward with a torch in hand, but as she approached and swung it at them, they shifted away from her down the corridor to avoid the light, and once a few meters away they materialized their hands again and threw daggers at Aegis from a distance.

Rakkan swung his sword at the daggers to knock them out of the air, giving Aegis time to heal himself.

“What’s with these guys? They’re moving really well.” Darkshot asked as he tried another shot, failing to hit again.

“They’re elites. Normal enemies in this game fight using dumbed down AI, but when you enter dungeons you will face Elite enemies that fight as though they are real living creatures. -” As she said this, two daggers were thrown at her right hand that was holding the torch in an attempt to disarm her, but she sidestepped them and they flew past. “Lures don’t do much beyond initial attraction to monsters like this.”

“So that means the real dungeon is downstairs?” Aegis asked, she nodded while charging past Aegis towards the two Shadow Assassins. Holding the torch in one hand, she drew her boar dagger in the other, but as she got close to them, one assassin materialized into his real form. It was a human fully garbed in black clothing save for a single slit to allow his eyes to be visible.

Once materialized, he held his hand out towards Lina’s torch and clenched his fist, as he did, all of the light in the corridor dimmed greatly, similar to what Aegis saw in the firewood storage, only this time around there was no firewood to rely on for light.

Once the light had dimmed, the second assassin that was still in a misty form rushed forward at her, maneuvering his form along the floor incredibly fast, materializing only for a small instant in order to cut her legs with its blades as it passed by her, dealing 90 shadow damage, then continued flying through Rakkan, Aegis, and Darkshot, attacking them each once for more shadow damage, though Aegis managed to block it. Rakkan took a swing at the shadow form again, but it did nothing.

'We just took on an army of cultists, now we’re about to lose to two Assassins', Aegis thought, glancing around to try and think of a solution. He spotted another torch hanging on the keep wall not far away and dashed towards it, yanking it off the wall despite it also still being dimmed. He recalled from the past encounter, that even dimmed it would still cancel the shadow movement skill if it got close enough to them.

Down the hall, the non-misted assassin engaged in battle with Lina, it sidestepped her attacks without fighting back, focusing on maintaining its dimming spell - Aegis had never seen Lina struggle to even land a hit on a target before, which helped in bringing the point home just how serious Elite monsters were.

The other assassin, having seen Aegis grab a torch, avoided him and began attacking Darkshot and Rakkan instead. By following the shadow's movement, the two of them were able to anticipate where the blade attacks would appear, but that only helped them dodge most of the time, and they were taking quite a few hits.

“Rakkan, help Lina break that one’s concentration. Darkshot, come to me!” Aegis shouted. Rakkan hesitated listening, but after a moment, complied, and ran down the corridor to Lina. Darkshot ran towards Aegis obediently, and the misty assassin pursued Darkshot from behind. Anticipating their movement style, Aegis held the torch up to meet Darkshot head on, so that the two of them were face to face. Simultaneously the shadow assassin maneuvered along the ceiling to get behind Aegis while avoiding the light of the torch.

“Shoot straight ahead, straight away.” Aegis commanded Darkshot. Darkshot lifted his bow up with an arrow drawn and held the end of it in the flames of the torch, immediately shot it forward, sailing it behind Aegis just as the assassin had landed to try and stab him from behind. The arrow ignited and carried the flames into the assassin’s body, canceling the shadow movement ability and forcing him to materialize.

“Pinning Shot!” Darkshot shouted, firing at nearly point blank so that he couldn’t miss. Green vines wrapped around the Assassin and snared him to the floor and ceiling while Aegis spun around to hold the torch right up to him, preventing him from going into his mist form again.

The assassin retaliated against Aegis by striking at his shield, but Aegis pressed forward and took the hits, they dealt much less damage now that the shadow effects had been removed, and in that time Darkshot unleashed a barrage of shots at the assassin.

The assassin on the other end of the hall was having trouble avoiding both Lina and Rakkan’s strikes, but once it saw that its companion had lost its shadow form, it dropped its maintenance of the light dimming effect and focused instead on attacking. Lina took advantage of his change in posture to shift behind him, so that he was flanked by her and Rakkan and unable to turn into his mist form due to her torch. With both assassins positioned like this, it only took a few more hits from the group to defeat them.

Upon death, both assassins dropped coin pouches and white item orbs, pieces of clothing and daggers that were much higher quality than the ones that’d been dropping up until this point. Rakkan watched Lina pick up the drops from the one they’d defeated together with a look of disappointment.

“Jeez… you’re saying the basement is going to be filled with stuff like that?” Aegis asked, Lina nodded back. “Well… if you’re going to be coming with us, you should join our group so the loot and experience is shared and I can see your health easily.” Aegis motioned to Rakkan. He was about to send a party invite before Lina interrupted him using their party communications.

"W-wait, Aegis, you shouldn't trust other players so easily..." Lina said.

"I'm not trusting him, but if he's not in our group and he's hiting our targets, we could lose out on the experience, right?"

"Y-yeah... Thats true, but him following us around is a bit strange." She glanced at him briefly, trying not to draw his attention.

"We'll keep an eye on him, you got that, Darkshot?" Aegis said, and he nodded back. Lina relented with a sigh. Aegis sent Rakkan a party invite and saw hesitation in Rakkan’s eyes but eventually he accepted.

“We need a way to deal with that shadow stuff before we go down there.” Darkshot commented.

“If this game really is all about realism…” Aegis commented as he walked off back to the entry hall, the others following behind him. “Then they oughta have stuff to keep the lights on. These torches don’t burn by themselves, right?” He asked rhetorically as he started searching through the crates and barrels they’d previously ignored. The others joined in by checking the opposite ends of the room - from the entry hall they could hear the sounds of battle occurring above them from Galanis’ group.

“I wonder if they’re dealing with any elites up there.” Darkshot asked. “You were upstairs, right? Did you see any?” He glanced at Rakkan, who shook his head no.

“What are we looking for?” Lina asked.

“Rags of cloth, flasks or canteens, really anything that looks like it holds liquid.” Aegis replied. “Like this.” He pointed to a crate that contained several dingy looking flasks. He opened one of them to take a whiff and confirmed it smelt like the oil he was looking for.

“Rags.” Rakkan said while lifting old pieces of dirty cloth out of another crate.

“Okay, so wrap your weapons with rags and we’ll douse it in oil, then it should function as a torch. Just be careful about burning yourself if you have your pain threshold set to a high number…” Aegis said this as Rakkan handed out the rags. He saw Darkshot take the rags and look at his arrows confused.

“You can probably just put something on your bow near your firing point, dip the arrows in the oil so the tips catch the flame instead of the shaft like before.” Aegis explained as Darkshot listened. Rakkan wrapped his longsword in rags, while Lina her daggers, and Aegis his shield, and afterwards they were all doused in the oil.

Before lighting any of them Aegis made sure to check the rest of the crates and add a few more flasks to his inventory that he found. Then he held out a lit torch and one by one, each of them ignited their weapons.

“Does this add fire damage to our attacks?” Darkshot asked curiously as he looked to be trying to write his name in the air with the flames.

“Not sure…” Aegis thought about it, realizing he’d have to be cautious with how he blocked just to be safe, so as not to accidentally lose pacifism. The four of them made their way back to the top of the basement stairs, Aegis walking in front while noting that his Lure buff would still be active for 4 more hours.

“Lets move nice and slow, we don’t want to fight too many of these things at once.” Aegis said, and they all nodded in agreement before beginning their descent into the lower parts of the Darxon Keep.

“Hey, you think those guys will be okay?” Eccen asked Galanis, their party taking a break after having just finished dispatching a group of cultists on the upper levels.

“That party of three? Probably.” Galanis shrugged.

“No, I mean, with Rakkan around? You know who that guy is, right?” Eccen replied worriedly.

“Yeah, he’s that solo player who’s been attacking live streamers in Orm. But Aegis’ group doesn’t have any streamers, so they should be fine.” Galanis reassured Eccen.

“Ah, yeah. I guess you’re right.” Eccen replied.