Chapter 69

Time Holds No Meaning

It took my group 6 months to finish the first dungeon safely. Six months to finish a basic dungeon in Zone 7. After I called my daughter and told her to explain the situation to everyone else I sat down and did some math. If one point took me six months, in Zone 7 it would take me 5,000 years to be able to make it into Zone 10 if I played it safe. I think I now know the reason there is very little if almost no contact with anyone who makes it into the final zones. I am going to be here for a very long time, enough that generations outside will have passed and most likely forget my existence. Some very rare long lived races might remember me or my exploits but that is not likely. Written human history only covered about 3,000 years, and I could potentially be here much longer than that.

I do not even know if the first dungeon I went through is typical. What if that was considered an easy dungeon? I may be spending years in each dungeon which will slow everything down even more. Speaking of which I do not even remotely have that many supplies in my inventory. I mean I have more than any sane person probably does. If I take out everything I could survive for ten years plus easy. However, that is not enough to even make it through this zone. I need to head to the safe area of the zone and try and figure out resupply issues and see if there is anyone I can talk to for more information.

Over the next 2 weeks I traveled with Walter and the kids through throughout the zone. Each afternoon I would fly straight up for about 500 meters and take a quick look around. It had to be a quick look and nothing else, because there were several very high level flying monsters that would leave you alone if you stayed on the ground, but got extremely territorial if you were flying in their area. One or two of them I would not even worry about, but when a flock of level 800 Hell Crows is coming at you it is a good idea to be somewhere else. So each afternoon it was a quick pop up and I would make a mental note of the area and terrain and then we would hike it while being careful the next day.

Nothing individually or even in small groups could really stand up to us, so we traveled fairly quickly and confidently. Finally, after almost 2 weeks I was able to see signs of intelligently made structures. We approached cautiously just in case it was something other than a Great Game safe area but were relieved to get the following notice.

Welcome to the Zone 7 safe area. All accommodations are free. A strict no fighting policy is enforced. To buy or sell supplies please visit the kiosk in the center of the area.

Everyone visibly relaxed and we headed in to find out what we could. The first noticeable thing was that there was nobody here. We were heading towards the center of the village and had not seen anyone at all. As we had reached each zone the number of people started becoming less and less, but we had always seen at least a few in the safe area if we visited. Even the last zone had at least a dozen people wandering about. That was not very many but it was not empty like this one.

I guess it sort of made sense though. This zone did not have stores run by participants or anything else. The only reason you would be in town would be to resupply or rest up. There really did not seem to be a reason other than that to congregate in one area. The actual number of people might be low also. If you took into account the experience penalty if you died, and then the chance you would survive if you had already died once, I bet the actual number of people in this zone is less than 100 people. You have to conquer 10 dungeons just to be able to leave. 20 dungeons in order to come back or that 100 year waiting period. Depending on how expensive supplies were several people may be waiting around zone 6 to accumulate experience and supplies before returning.

We reached the center of town without seeing another soul and walked up to the Great Game kiosk. It looked like an interactive ATM from back on Earth. Time to see what the damage was going to be.

Welcome to the Great Game Kiosk. Please select from the options below.

A. Purchase Supplies with money

B. Purchase Supplies with points

C. Sell Dungeon Materials for money

D. Sell Dungeon Materials for points

Well it seems that there are a few options here I did not expect. I did not think you could trade dungeon materials for points. I wonder what the rate is? I guess I need to go through each option one by one so I can come up with an overall strategy. I select option A.

1 years supplies for one person – 250,000 mithral coins

5 years supplies for one person – 1,000,000 mithral coins

10 years supplies for one person – 1,500,000 mithral coins

This was absurd pricing. I guess this was how the Great Game got its money back from high level players. Luckily I could afford it for a while. After leaving the majority of my cash with the kingdom for development I still had kept back just over 10,000,000 mithral coins. Since Walter exists on mana, I would need supplies for 5 people. I could easily purchase 10 year’s worth of supplies with what I currently had. At the worst that would allow me to earn enough points to exit this area and rethink my strategy at a lower zone. That combined with my close to ten years of supplies I already have could see me through 20 years here if I try to live of the land as best I can also.

Let’s see 20 years at 2 dungeons a year gives me 40 points. More than enough to exit and re-enter if needed. Ok, I am feeling a little better than before. Let’s see what the other options are before I make a decision, I select option B this time.

1 years supplies for one person – 1 point

5 years supplies for one person – 3 points

10 years supplies for one person – 5 points

Still very steep on the prices but acceptable for emergencies. I think that the mithral coins are a better option though. I need to save points to keep getting through this. Let’s try option C.

1 dungeon’s worth of materials– 200,000 mithral coins

So one dungeon is worth slightly less money than one year’s supplies. Option D.

5 dungeon’s worth of materials – 2 points

If I just save everything I get from each dungeon then I can earn 2 year’s worth of supplies every two dungeons from drops. Since the exchange rate is better as I trade more I could save them up if needed. I would rather have the points though. This is going to be a balancing act. I think I will explore and try the lower level dungeons first and use the supplies I already have. I need to see how fast I can get through a dungeon once I learn it. If I can do better than 1 dungeon every 6 months this may take a while but will be doable without me leaving.

However, if I need to leave then I will have to save up for probably several hundred years on the outside to make sure I have enough coin to continue. I would not want to come back until I had the resources to finish all the zones. I bet as you increase the zone the trading rate gets worse. Wait a minute, does it only count dungeons in this zone?

Since I am already in option D I select the trade option. If this works I will have found a work around.

Scanning participants inventory. You have materials from 173 complete dungeons. You may trade them all or just a set amount. How much would you like to trade?

Another bug. The option was just for complete dungeon materials. So any dungeon I have completed and never traded a portion of materials from is counted. This is fantastic. If needed I can exit and farm lower level dungeons and then come back and trade for the points. Trade all.

170 dungeons worth of materials traded for 68 points.

Excellent, I already made 68 points. I might as well stick around for the time I have supplies for and see if I can find a dungeon that can be farmed quicker. When I get down to about 6 months of supplies I will exit and then move back down to zone 4 and farm dungeons for materials and points. I can travel back to Earth once to see everyone and pick up enough supplies to last my group for decades if not longer. Nothing goes bad in my inventory so as long as it is available I can store tons of meat, grains, vegetables, and anything else I want. Heck I could even have ready to made meals made and I could just bring them out and warm them over a fire. I now have a plan and a mission to complete. Time to start looking around this zone and to find the best dungeon to farm for the next few years.

It’s been three years and I need to make a decision. Time to consult the group.

“Ok everyone we just finished the Undead Fields in a new record time of 4 months. What do you think about staying here and farming it for the next 7 or 8 years?”

“Master, we have only seen 7 dungeons should we make this decision so soon?”

Bruce chimed in, “Yeah dad, there are probably dozens more out there. One could be really easy.”

“I understand that guys what I am worried about is that we hit a bunch of 6 to 8 month long dungeons before we find one. That would mean that any advantage we would have gained would be lost by the time it took to find it.”

Esmerelda spoke up, “Dad that is only true about this time in zone 7. If I remember right you wanted to exit to get supplies and then run several quick dungeons in zone 4 for a lot of dungeon materials. We would then have to come back to zone 7 and keep grinding our levels until we feel confident about moving on.”

“That sounds about right sweetie.”

“Well if we are coming back to grind levels, any time wasted now would be made up if we found a quicker dungeon. So we should keep switching dungeons all the way up until it is time to leave. Even if we find one that is easy. There always could be an easier one that we might hit later. Also if we just do one dungeon over and over for almost ten years I think I would go crazy.”

“Those are all great points Esmerelda. Is everyone else in agreement then. Do we continue to check out different dungeons until we exit zone 7?”

Everyone agreed that this would be for the best. I did some quick mental math. If we kept the same pace as we have these past three years we would average 2 dungeons a year for 14 more points. We already have 74 points that would take us to 88 points. That is more than enough to exit and get back in quickly if we need to. However, we will probably spend the 100 years outside of zone 7 penalty to save 10 points and grind dungeons. The levels we earn will probably just be enough to pay the fee to stay in dungeon world, but the exchange for points in zone 7 should make up for that.

Another 7 years passed by quickly. Time flies when each dungeon is different. We had found what would be our three grinding dungeons when we returned to zone 7. The first dungeon was discovered in the 5th year here. It is another insect hive dungeon that is just built perfectly for kiting and my trademark trap explosions techniques. We can clear that dungeon in 2 months easy and possibly faster with practice. The second dungeon was a survival wave dungeon. You had to defend a tower against waves of different monsters.

This dungeon was turned into a giant tower defense game on Azure’s suggestion. Azure did not actually know what a tower defense game was, but that is the only way I can describe it. He figured out that as long as there is an unobstructed path the hordes of monsters would follow it and ignore anything that attacked them unless they had a distance attack. They would not try to go over walls that were taller than them, they would just follow the path. When we tried to make it a maze, they knew the exact path to take so that was a wasted round of experimenting.

We were given as much time by the Great Game as we wanted to set up defenses between each round. By the final round we just created a 15 meter wide spiral that eventually led to the tower in the middle. We made the walls 20 meters high and put basic towers along the path every 100 meters. Then we started the round. The final round only took us 3 hours to clear. We just kept hopping from tower to tower letting loose breath weapons on the hordes below as they slowly spiraled to the center.

This must be another bug, because there was no intelligence behind the monster horde until they started fighting in melee combat. If they reached melee range they would fight intelligently and use tactics, but as long as you were out of melee range they just continued on towards the tower. We ran this dungeon a second time after figuring out the tower defense tactic and were able to clear the wave dungeon in only 42 days or about a month and a half. If we wanted to forgo some sleep we could probably get it down to only 30 days, but breaks are essential so no mistakes are made.

The final dungeon we are going to use was the undead fields dungeon. After Azure figured out that you can exploit some dungeons and the monster’s intelligence I wanted to try something out. We headed back to the Undead Fields and I implemented my new tactic. I called it the giant hole of doom or G-HOD. No really that is what it was, I was declaring a G-HOD on the undead. (I thought it was a great pun, my kids refused to speak to me for a whole day afterwards, and Walter just shook his head and said why Master?) Walter and I dug a giant pit about 500 meters around, about 10 meters deep, while the kids protected us. We then sloped ramps down on four sides and set up a solid block of stone 10 meters high and 20 meters in circumference in the center.

Next came my brilliant idea. I figured if the Great Game limited the intelligence of some or all the monsters until they were within melee distance in one dungeon it might apply to every dungeon. I sent each child out in one direction and gave them simple instructions. Use your breath weapon over the largest area you can in 2 minutes and return to the block of stone in the center. I was staying on the center block, with Walter, to watch out if any one of them needed help or ran into trouble. After two minutes they all flew back and met us in the middle. Soon enough my guess was proven right. The undead ran, walked, crawled, oozed, limped, and jumped into the pit trying to get at us in the center. The kids had drawn their aggro. Now we just had to eliminate them.

If we started to get overwhelmed I had Walter remove a ramp or two. The undead would not just fall into the hole but would walk along the outside staring at us until a route was available to reach us. This allowed us to control numbers and drag enemies in from across the dungeon. When we killed enough, the Boss called the Undead King would spawn with his retinue. The great thing was he had the same behavior as the basic undead and would just try to reach us or stay at the edge raising more undead until we built a ramp for him to come down into the pit. Instead of 4 months we were able to kite and destroy the field dungeon in 30 days.

So with our explorations we could now complete a zone 7 dungeon every two months at the longest or one month at the shortest. We decided that we would do the undead dungeon until we got tired of it and then switch to the monster wave dungeon and then back. We would only do the insect dungeon when we could no longer stand either one of the two fastest ones. If we had too we could take a break and try others just to keep our sanity, but at least we had each other to talk too and entertain each other. If I was by myself I would probably lose it.

After 9 years we had completed 37 dungeons on top of the 68 points I earned for the dungeon drops for a total of 95 points. It was finally time to leave zone 7 and go and prepare for the next 100 years. We exited zone 7 and I immediately received a message updating the points.

You have left zone 7. 10 points have been deducted from your total leaving you 85 points. You may re-enter zone 7 for another 10 points at any time or wait 100 years and receive free entry.