As soon as we got inside the dungeon, one phrase came to mind immediately. Out of the frying pan and into the fire… The first area of a dungeon was supposed to be a sacred place free of problems where a group could gather up and prepare themselves without hassle. Apparently, nobody told the devs and AIs about that since we were directly beset upon by a pair of skeletal guards wearing mail armor and wielding halberds. Level 16 Undead Guards, their weapons slashed out to catch Kayla and Archie with their attacks. Kayla’s defense score was easily able to shrug off the brunt of the attack, but poor Archie took a solid 20% of his HP in that one strike with a cry of surprise and pain from the man.

It had all happened so quick that I didn’t even have time to slow down, so I used my momentum to my advantage. Turning to the side slightly where the Guard was, I leapt up and kicked out to strike the skeleton in the chest, sending the mob stumbling back a few steps from the force of my blow. Once my feet were back on the ground I spun my scythe around and slashed out at the kicked Guard to score a solid blow against the mob for a good chunk of damage.

“You two alright over there?” The clang of metal on metal accompanied the call from our female companion as she dealt an exchange of blows with the Guard on her side of the dungeon entrance. A quick glance over at her showed that she was handling her mob with ease, the undead not being able to really break through her armor rating very well.

“Yeah, Zex and I got this one alright.” Focusing back on my own target, I activated True Haste to increase my attack speed more and tore into the slower Guard that regained its balance. The battle didn’t last long, Archie helping me finish off my mob and then spinning to deliver a quick combo of punches to drop the one Kayla was dealing with. These two mobs seemed fairly weak, at least in terms of what I assumed a level 16 mob should be, and were probably just here to keep players on their toes.

“Okay, that is some serious BS… Who puts mobs right inside of the entrance of a dungeon?” Archie’s grumbles were low but still loud enough to hear easily. “I mean seriously, what the fuck.” He rubbed at his arm where the skeleton’s halberd scored on his character, the memory of the surprising pain still fresh in his mind. Yeah, the pain sensitivity was a lot lower than real life, but the surprise of the sudden feeling was sure to be a shock for anyone when it was unexpected.

Kayla walked up and poked him in the ribs with a gauntleted finger, a smirk on her face. “Oh suck it up sissy. Now you know what I deal with every damn encounter! How about you tank these fuckers for a while and then I will deal with your bitching and moaning about a bit of pain.” I chuckled at them and shook my head, turning to look around us and figure out where we were now.

The room we were in was a through-way to the interior courtyard of the keep, a portcullis just ahead of us dropped down and blocking the path that way. Torches burned on brackets on either side of the wide path, a single door set into the wall on the right where I figured arriving guests to the castle would enter in order to await their audience with the lord of the keep. The dark stone all around was dark and weathered, smooth with age and covered by dust and grime as if not having been cleaned in ages. Well, that was to be expected if this place was staffed by undead. Peering through the portcullis into the courtyard, I could see a stable set up along the far wall with a few other buildings spread out in the surprisingly large area. The whole area looked to be almost a perfect square, the walls of the keep proper rising up all around the open section, keeping the inner area secure from all outside threats.

“Right then. Shall we get this show on the road?” Kayla grinned at myself and Archie, stepping over to the only door leading into the castle itself that we could access at the time. The door opened easily, albeit with a screeching of the hinges, and revealed a waiting room of sorts. Plush chairs and small tables dotted the room, all of it a bit rough looking thanks to the age of the furniture. Judging by the appearance of some of the seats, they would probably have fallen apart if I decided to test them out. Contrary to everything else in the room, the large fireplace set in the wall held a large burning pile of wood to light the room and throwing shadows everywhere.

Weapons at the ready, we all looked around the room as we walked to the middle of the floor. Archie looked like he had to suppress a shiver as he spoke, “This place is creepy as fuck. We should hurry up and try to speed run this thing… Less time spent here the better.”

“I don’t know, I think this place is cool.” I stated that while taking in all of the details of the ancient keep. Truly it was interesting to me seeing the level of details put into the crafting of this castle by the devs. “Then again, I remember you never could handle a good horror movie.” Archie’s glare at me brought a laugh from me before I smirked at him and shrugged. “But anyway, you are right. Let’s try to beat our time from the last dungeon and see if we get a noticeable increase of rewards.” I pointed my scythe at a door leading deeper into the castle and nodded at Kayla. “After you, my dear.”

“Awww, such a gentleman!” The sarcasm lacing her voice made me laugh again as she moved to the indicated door and pulled it open, sticking her head through to take a look. Pulling back, she turned towards Archie and waved him forward. “Hallway. Zex, time to stealth and scout. Move quick!” She grinned and kicked him in the ass lightly as he went by, a laugh coming from the man as he ducked past and faded from view. She next tapped me with her shield and tilted her head to motion me through the door. “Come on, time to wreck an instance.” She grinned at me, a happy sparkle in her eye. “Besides, if this whole place is undead, I might be able to do some real damage with Celeste here!”

“Heh, well then try and keep up on the damage charts, Miss Tank.” I slipped past her before she could make any more comments and moved swiftly down the hallway. Candle holders lined the walls to provide light for us, even if it wasn’t the best for brightness, and revealed faded paintings and wall hangings lining the hall.

It was only two minutes before Archie’s voice carried over the party chat, tone sounding excited at the prospects of combat. “Here we go folks. Hang a left at the next intersection, right is a dead end to an empty guestroom with nothing interesting, and I am about thirty feet down. Found a room that looks to be a dining hall, two packs of skeletons here. Have an interesting set up though… Four are more Guards but with sword and board and the rest look like nobles, only long dead and rotted.”

“Got it. Will be on you in a moment, then we will take a look and see where we stand.” Indeed, Kayla and myself were not far behind Archie and quickly closed the gap between us without difficulty. I poked my head around the doorway and took in the sight of the large room in order to make plans. Long tables that could sit about twenty people each were arranged in a U shape with hanging candelabras covered in crystal scattering light over the whole room. There was no food anywhere in sight, but two Guards stood on either side of the head table where three of those noblemen sat, staring at nothing and not moving. The rest of the nobles were sitting at a table close to us along one of the arms of the U shape. Eight in all, I inspected them and found out that they were indeed Undead Nobles.

Nothing interesting came up with the details, but I figured we would be better off pulling this pack and see what they could do before dealing with the Guards. Outlining the basic plan to the others, I tapped Kayla on the shoulder to send her into the room and draw the attention of the closest undead. Aggro range in the game was easy enough to figure out, as a mob would raise its head and stare at you when you got near the edge of its range, then would attack when you took another step beyond that. As real as the game felt in most senses, it was still just a set program of algorithms and code. Once you figure it out, the rest just becomes simple enough.

Kayla stepped into the large room and lifted her shield up in front of her, axe pointing at one of the closer nobles and casting a healing spell on it. The gold glow encompassed the mob, a shrill shriek emitting from it as the creature’s health dropped by half instantly. Whipping their heads about, all eight of the closer undead jumped rather spryly to their feet and darted towards our tank, giving Archie and myself time to spread out to the sides and wait.

We didn’t have to wait long until the nobles crashed into Kayla. While they didn’t have proper weapons, their fingers were sharp as hell and scraped loudly across her plate armor, though did little in the way of damage to Kayla. With the mobs all focused on her, Archie and I stepped up and started doing our jobs. Fists covered in a softly glowing silver hue shaped into spikes darted about, breaking bones audibly with every strike as I twirled my scythe about and laid into the backs and sides of the lightly armored nobles. A few flashes of golden light told me Kayla was flinging more healing spells about and wreaking havoc on the pack of undead. Thank the devs that they didn’t alter that common mechanic in games where a healing spell on the undead deals damage instead. With such a feature in place, the first pack of mobs dropped easily and in only twenty seconds.

“Right, so these nobles are the trash of trash mobs, Guards a bit more effective, and I will go out on a limb here and say that we will soon run into packs that are more formidable.” As Archie spoke, he seemed to be focused on something I couldn’t see, probably checking his inventory for any loot that dropped and was automatically picked up by my skill. With a grunt of disappointment, he turned back to the remaining mobs in the room and waved Kayla ahead. “Draw the Guards on to you, Calamity and I will wipe out the Nobles and then focus one Guard at a time. Conserve mana for this fight, Kayla, until we figure out how hard these Guards hit.”

“On it!” She jumped forward and into the aggro range of one set of Guards. They quickly raised their shields and drew swords, approaching Kayla even as she jogged up to them and swung her axe to fully secure their attention. The other Guards and the Nobles all started approaching Kayla as well, and I took advantage of aggro mechanics to activate Temporal Step. With the second pair of Guards already drawn to Kayla, they would pass right by me unless I attacked them to draw their attention. That in mind, I used the time my skill was active in order to move behind the Nobles and swung my weapon around to slash all three, bringing me to the top of their threat list.

All three Nobles turned and swiped their clawed hands at me, only one actually being close enough to score on my armor and dealing a couple percentage points of damage to me. It wasn’t a lot, but if I let them attack for long it would all add up quickly enough, not that I planned on giving them that chance. “Zex, help me here with two then mark up the Guards and set order for me to join!” I wasn’t inactive while I spoke, gaining two more hits on each of the undead before me to shave off more of their health. These mobs were fairly weak, trash to suffocate with numbers and take up space to make the players spend more time in the instance, but that didn’t mean they could be ignored. Two to three percent damage a hit was enough to make any player fall if they just stood there and took the abuse.

By the time Archie and I finished with our small group of friends, Kayla had all four Guards focused intensely on herself. As I had asked him, after helping drop two of the nobles he had spun and marked the four important mobs and started in on one of them quickly, leaving me to catch up to him and help with the rest. Our group worked like a well-oiled machine, time spent playing with and against each other over the years shining through once more as we systematically dropped mob after mob until none were left standing with minimal damage received from the enemies.

Dusting his hands off, Archie grinned then gave a jaunty salute before fading from view to move up and scout ahead again. A glance at the clock showed us being in the instance for only a few minutes so far, which suited me just fine, and had plenty of time before our five hour warning would sound. We could always ignore the warning if it came down to it, but I hoped that we would be able to wrap this instance up in less than the time we had remaining. The game wouldn’t kick us out, but as paid employees of Dumadine Technology we had to set an example of following the suggested play time parameters as much as possible.

If those of us who were streaming logged out for a time every five hours, our viewers would see that as standard practice and most would follow suit with the habit. Monkey see, monkey do. Perhaps a bit simplistic in my thinking, but I had yet to see much that changed my views on the world as a whole when it came to public personalities. Even look at the actors and actresses of the world. They wear a certain style of clothing and then half the population is sporting the same look a week later. Humans were impressionable creatures and it was our job now to put a good practice for playing habits out into the world. My current goal in life was to enjoy the game while at the same time making more people want to play it, and play responsibly. If people started losing their jobs or getting ill from this game, then public opinion of it would drop and then I would end up losing my job. Can’t have that happening, now could I?

Kayla and I had followed behind Archie slowly, giving our friend enough time to scout the area ahead and report his findings. The result of his latest excursion turned out to be him running back towards us, yelling in party chat at the top of his lungs. “Incoming pat! Ran into a squad of guards and they saw me!” Pat referred to ‘patrol’ or a group of mobs that moved along a pre-set route, another common feature of game dungeons that we didn’t see in the first instance we completed.

We were just at an intersection when Archie’s voice came through, and Kayla nodded despite him not being able to see her. “Got it, we will set an ambush here for them. Keep them close to you and draw them back. As soon as you pass our hallway I will jump out and grab them up, you and Calamity do your thing. Mark and burn.” Luckily for us, the halls were fairly wide and would allow us to deal with the mobs without much effort in terms of the confines. Six people could easily walk side by side through the corridors, more than that if they bunched up some.

“Good plan, four seconds out.” After the said time had passed, Archie darted past our hall from which Kayla instantly stepped out and swung her shield around to catch the first Guard in the face with it. A loud clang filled the air as the impact dropped the mob flat onto its back and dealt a large portion of damage to it. Must have been a crit for such a result, not that I was complaining. Archie wasn’t merely running when he was leading the group to us, and each mob already sported a glowing icon above their heads to indicate the kill order. Efficient as always, my old friend.

With all the attention firmly on Kayla now, Archie and I turned our own focus on the kill priority and settled into a minute and a half of battle with the eight Guards. Kayla had to stay on the defensive for the most part, as these mobs sported swords and shields but still managed to put out a good bit of damage to the tank. Every hit she received that wasn’t intercepted with her shield shaved off a few more percentage of her health, causing her to cast a heal on herself every fifteen seconds. Thankfully the undead mobs hated the holy magic enough to really want the woman dead and completely ignored the men dropping them one after another.

When the last of the mobs fell we took a short break to regen our mana and energy, then proceeded to rinse and repeat the practice. Room after room, hall after hall, we cleared every mob we ran across in a timely fashion. We were making good progress through the trash packs, when we stumbled across the first boss of this dungeon. A Guard room separated us from this wing of the castle and the next, two doors leading out of this room of which I assumed one lead into the courtyard while the other went to the next wing. A tall skeleton was in the middle of the room, a two handed bastard sword slung across his back, and surrounded by six more Guards with swords and shields.

“Well then, looks like a straight forward fight to me. Shall we get it rolling and see what comes of it?” Kayla raised an eyebrow at us in question to which Archie shrugged his reply and I merely nodded. No information was available on this dungeon yet, so we had to figure out the encounters as we went. Again though, I wasn’t complaining much. This was one of the more exciting parts of playing games for me. Running into a new encounter that had every possibility to surprise me, then figuring out the mechanics and surpassing the boss was always a rush for a gamer like myself and made the prospects of playing a brand new game that much more fun.

Seeing that we were all ready, Kayla gave a giddy laugh and moved forward with shield raised to start the fight. I quickly marked up the smaller Guards to take out first, my plan being to wipe the small fry and only leave us the one big guy, and then quickly jumped ahead to attack the first target. Archie joined me, and suddenly it was like clockwork. Once Guard fell, followed swiftly by another, then two more. Kayla was taking a thrashing from the Captain with large sword, but held out easily enough with her Celestial Fairy pouring in heals.

In under two minutes, Archie and I had all six Guards down and out, leaving us only the Captain. Turning our attention to him, we were surprised to see Kayla had already dropped him down to 75% HP! She must have spent some mana on using her Holy spells on him while we were taking out the Guards. Well, that should make the whole fight easier now in that case. I had refrained from using my mana thus far on skills in order to save it for emergencies, but this fight was looking straight forward so I activated my True Haste in order to rain blows on the Captain. Archie joined me, and the bosses HP began dropping steadily under the combined onslaught.

Everything was going well for a short time, Kayla was able to withstand all the Captain’s attacks easily enough and both Archie and myself were heaping on the DPS. That is, right up until the boss hit the 50% HP mark. With a yell and flourish, the Captain spun a full circle and slashed all around to knock all of us back ten feet in one go while dealing minimal damage. Seemed the skill was more to make room than to hurt us.

With room to maneuver, the boss spun and ran to one of the doors, bursting through it to reveal the courtyard beyond. While we all got back to our feet, I watched the Captain run towards the stable, a shrill whistle escaping his lips. In reply to that call, a hellish scream similar to that of a horse echoed from the wooden structure. What emerged from the stable could hardly be called a mere horse however. So black that it looked to be made directly from shadow, the beast had purple flames for a mane and tail, more tufts of violet flames at the hooves. Eyes shone a glowing purple with a thin reptilian slit pupil that burned red instead of black. I froze in shock as I used my Inspect skill for details on the creature.

Nightmare Stallion

Level: 17

HP: ?

Nightmares are made from taking a pure Unicorn and twisting the soul with dark magic to produce a creature of pure hatred. The process has only ever occurred once, making the original Nightmare Queen, but her children are all nearly as vile as the mother. This creature was born of the flesh of the Nightmare Queen and given to Lord Hashrom as a gift when he signed away his soul to the darkness.

Now that was some fun lore right there. A nice little twist on the common myths, once again. The devs all put a good amount of work into this game, and I was appreciating every bit of it during my adventure here. My party and I filed out the door just as the Captain leapt onto the Nightmare without a saddle. Not what I would call a comfortable ride, but necessity dictated the events I supposed. With a yell, the undead soldier spurred the horse forward, puffs of purple flames spitting up whenever the hooves hit the cobbled courtyard and scorching the stone.

“Well shit. This just got a lot harder…” I dove to the side, narrowly avoiding those trampling hooves as the devil’s own steed dashed past me. Turning that dive into a roll, I made it to my feet and spun around to keep an eye on the boss as he in turn wheeled his horse around to face us once more. “Serena, Holy Bolt that thing. Zex, Use that moonlight blade thing of yours. Let’s see what hurts this fucker.”

A pair of hands shot up, one from each of my friends, as they shot off their ranged spells towards the Nightmare and his rider. A streak of golden light flared from Kayla’s hand while two blades of silvery light made an X as they shot from Archie’s. Bastard must have leveled up Fallon’s skill and gained a second blade per cast. Both magical attacks shot true, colliding with the Nightmare’s chest and making the beast scream in pain as it reared up. Between the two strikes, 10% of its HP was shaved away according to the bar that now appeared above the horse’s head. Good, we should be able to deal with this as long as we were careful.

When those front hooves slammed once more into the ground, the beast must have used a special ability. From the point of impact, a shockwave of purple flames burst forth along the ground and raced outwards in a circle. I saw Archie jump into the air in surprise as the flames past him and he took no damage, so when they approached me I tried to do the same. No luck… For all my speed and time abilities, I couldn’t properly time the jump to avoid the flames completely and took 15% of my total HP in damage from the flames. To my right, Kayla had cheated. Instead of trying to jump the flaming ring, she dropped to one knee and slammed her shield down in front of her. When the flames reached that shield they merely parted and left a hole in the circle behind her as the ring continued to expand. Damn tanks and their tricky shields…

Lesson learned for the next time that ability would happen, I readied my scythe and leapt forward to slash at the mount, calling out into the party chat as I did so. “Serena, save your mana for healing! Zex, unload those ranged attacks into these fuckers. We need to end this one quick so we don’t get any more nasty surprises we won’t like.” Following my orders, Kayla stepped to the side of the horse that held the massive sword of the Captain’s while Archie went to the other side where he could do his business without friendly fire. That left me the front of the horse. Not what I would say was the ideal position, but necessary for the job at hand. The length of my scythe allowed me to stay away from the head enough that I was able to dodge most of the bites and flailing hooves of the Nightmare, and my lifesteal helped mitigate the damages from the ones I couldn’t avoid in time. Plus, potions were my friend.

Since the phase transition of this boss where he got his mount, the fight once more went into a rinse and repeat state as we jumped the flame rings and I used my speed to my advantage to dodge as much damage as I could while still putting out the DPS as heavily as I could. Archie soon ran out of mana for his ranged attacks and stepped up to use the Nightmare’s side as his personal heavy bag, to great effect. Apparently the moonlight weaponry he used did bonus damage to this creature of darkness, and he easily outstripped my DPS by a good margin.

Two minutes after Archie joined me in melee range, the Nightmare Stallion let out a terrible cry as the last of its HP faded off the health bar, the creature falling over onto its side in death. The Captain tumbled out of the saddle, now sitting at 40% HP from his exchanges with Kayla, and the three of us surrounded the undead soldier to finish the job off. No more real surprises came at us from the fight, and after the Captain fell I looked back on it and realized that I enjoyed the transition from inside to courtyard for the battle. It made the encounter interesting and fresh, something that had become a strange experience since most games used the same mechanics over and over for every dungeon, only changing little aspects.

Almost as soon as the Captain fell, I pulled my inventory screen up and checked to see if I got anything good from the boss. Scanning the list, I didn’t see anything that really caught my eye except for a single item.

Eye of the Nightmare

Soulbound

On use, this item will summon forth a Nightmare Stallion that will remain under your control until dismissed. The Nightmare Stallion can be ridden by one player at a time, but may not be used during battle.

Hell yes! I got a mount out of the deal! I linked the item to the party chat and then watched Archie and Kayla to see their reactions. When nothing happened, I noticed they were too busy looking at their own screens to see the chat. I was just about to say something when Archie whooped loudly and pumped a fist into the air. “Yes! I got a mount! Now I can ride around in style on my own personal Nightmare!” I blinked, looking to Kayla as she didn’t say a word and instead used an item.

Right beside her, a portal of green flames split open and her own Nightmare Stallion stepped from the opening to stand beside her. A look of pure glee crossed her face as she focused on the rest of us again. “So, it seems we all got a mount out of this fight? That has to be some kind of bug… I highly doubt the devs would give away mounts like these to everybody just for beating a mini-boss in this dungeon. I am going to open a ticket and report this, you two do the same. We will probably be able to keep the mounts as a reward for finding the bug.”

She was right, of course. We had to report this in case it really was an unplanned occurrence. Better to report this now ourselves then to have the admins find out about it later and then rain their wrath down on us for not bringing this to their attention. I was just about to open up my system menu to send a ticket to a GM when a thunderclap sounded beside us in the courtyard. A man in white robes now stood with us where nobody else was supposed to be. Unlike most players, this man also had a nameplate over his head while not in my party… He must be a GM for this all to occur.

“Greetings, players. I am the Game Master Archimedes. I saw Serena’s ticket and instantly came to check on this issue as it is of grave importance. Players should not be gaining free mounts this easily, and it is indeed a bug in the code. There is a very small chance of this drop from the boss of course, but it is only supposed to happen once every two hundred boss kills or so, and only one at a time at that!” He grinned at us and waved his hand through the air, seeing our dismayed looks. “Oh, do not worry. We will not be taking the mounts away from you. You are not the first players to make out decently on a bug that was discovered and reported right away, nor are you the first to gain mounts. I see no reason not to allow you to retain those Nightmares in payment for being honest with us. This bug should be patched in the update tonight, should our programmers get to it in time. Thank you for playing Realm of Infinity!”

And with that, the GM vanished in a clap of thunder just as he had come in. Unable to hold back a grin, I looked at Kayla’s Nightmare and saw that the mane, tail and hooves all had green flames on it. Curious, I summoned my own Nightmare and was rewarded by a portal of blue fire which spat out my own mount. Like the portal flames, my Nightmare’s mane, tail and hooves were blue fire. Neat! Kayla inspected my horse, comparing it to her own and smiled with a shrug saying, “I like green better anyway!”

Both of us turned to look at Archie next, waiting for him to summon his own horse so we could see what color he got. Turned out, his flames were silver. With me and Archie, our Unique Fairies probably had a bit of influence over what color the flames turned out to be, but only time would tell if ours were odd or if everyone got different colors. Aly floated down, comparing the color of her hair to the flames on my horse with a smile, the two shades nearly identical.

“So, we are now the proud owners of our very own Nightmares.” I grinned at my friends and dismissed the mount. “We will need to take them for a celebratory ride after we finish this instance! But that comes after we reap the first clear rewards.” I pointed back into the guardroom and the other door waiting for us there. “Tally ho!”