It took a couple of in game hours for everyone to gather up near the quest location. Eztli discovered that there was an 8th member of their party, but he had logged off after getting PK’ed, which is why they had the open spot to invite him into the party earlier. The map location for the quest lead to a small valley that Eztli had probably flown directly over at least twice without even noticing it was there, due to the way the cannon overhung the valley, from the air, from the right angle this location would look like flat ground. He noted his failure, he had been so addicted to those hawk eyes, he grew overconfident and sloppy.

From the ground it appeared to be half a cave, with part of the roof collapsed. If caves were hundreds of feet high. It was a dark and oppressive atmosphere in the canyon. The smells of swap gas and rotting things created such a noxious odor that most of the party was struggling to keep from gagging. Eztli had never been here before, but he vaguely recalled the name to this place, as it was famous 25 years ago. “El valle de la podredumbre”, or “The Valley of Corruption”. One of the most dangerous level 100 locations in the game, certainly not a place he wanted to go as a lvl.76 character. The monsters in here, weren’t amazingly brutal, however they were all poisonous, and the plant life was deadly.

He looked over the party contemplating their abilities and comparing it against what he knew about this area.

Golden_Flower, the one who got the quest in the first place was a short little Aztec beauty, he had mistakenly thought she was a template priestess/healer, due to her spirit healing and spirit communion trees, both were the first two trees unlocked by the template healer. However, when running the dungeon the prior day he realized she was probably unclassed, as she had a unique skill called spirit calling which allowed her to resurrect a teammate leaving them with 1 hit point and no xp loss for the death. Spirit Calling wasn’t a skill the template priests or shamans got, the template priests got a skill called resurrection, which was far more useful in battle, as it would heal a fallen party member to full health at a 50% xp penalty (on their current progress to level up).

Duuca was a large jaguar warrior, who was an unclassed Aztec archer, similar to what Eztli almost turned out to be 30 years ago. If Duuca progresses his character right, he could be an absolute terror on the battlefield, back in the old Underworld unclassed Aztec archers were terrifying for their sneak attack skills and stealth hunting and tracking skills. They were so popular in some of the non-dungeon style raids in the level 500-1000 Underworld if you had one you could probably find a party any time you wanted to and have your pick of the loot as well. It was this late game dominance that Mark originally was aiming for.

Sexy_Librarian was the party’s other girl (well the avatar was female, he had no interest in discovering the truth of the matter), she was taller than Golden flower, a well-proportioned Aztec warrior, with lean mussels and dark hair, she was actually modestly dressed contrary to her character name. She was an archer like Duuca, though she had a slightly different ranged skill tree that specialized in “AOE” damage, called “spirit archery”. It was a good skill tree, and made her a good addition for most dungeon raids.

FISH_LOVER was small short evil looking shaman, an unclassed spirit magic focused DPS character. Clearly this guy had an RP idea in mind when he put together that old avatar, as he looked like an ancient head shrinking shaman. The reason Eztli was surprised when FISH_LOVER gave him that accessory was precisely because FISH_LOVER could have used it to send his damage through the stratosphere, and unlock his full skill trees.

SpikieBoi was a huge Jaguar warrior, pure tank template build, Eztli didn’t have an opinion about how skilled he was or not, but at least the survivability of SpikieBoi was pretty much guaranteed.

The last two could have been twins, both generic template Jaguar warrior DPS, one was called Musashi_XXX and the other was one of the original survivors along with Sexy_Librarian and FISH_LOVER called xXx_PainBringer_xXx

Pausing his advance with the party Eztli cleared his throat. “How much do you know about this place?” The foul air was so strong just speaking made him feel like he just stuffed his mouth full of rotten meat.

Golden_Flower responded to his question, “Not much, I was told this was where to find the python whose teeth I needed, however the quest giver warned me to bring a party because it was dangerous here.”

Eztli spoke up, “I know a bit about this place, this is a deadly valley filled with poisonous plants, animals and lizards. I don’t know much about the creatures in here apart from the fact apparently the plants are more dangerous than the monsters, the only other thing I know is that our chance of wiping is pretty high in here if we can’t detox poison or venom.”

They all paused at that and looked at the lone healer, Golden_Flower. Golden_Flower, noticed their gazes and spoke up, “I have two spells that might help. One called advanced poison resistance and the other called detoxification.”

Eztli laughed at her reply “You should be in LM_STARS, how did you get those two skills before level 100, ah never mind I won’t pry; well half the danger here is handled apparently. I suggest we approach this whole valley like a raid dungeon we’ve never been in.”

The party organized themselves, with the SpikieBoi up front, with Musashi_XXX and xXx_Painbringer_xXx on the sides, Golden_flower, Eztli and FISH_LOVER in the middle Sexy_Librarian in the rear, with Duuca scouting for the party. It was a little weaker on the back side then Eztli would have preferred, but with no other melee DPS to guard the back Sexy_Librarian was a solid backup choice, as she had good hit points and eyesight.

The Valley wasn’t particularly wide, but it was packed with life, dark greens, black mud, the howls of some sort of ape echoed, while a roar of some unidentified animal cried back. Overall the valley had all the makings of a setting for a survival horror movie. Mark himself couldn’t help but feel some tightness in his chest as this valley bore a striking resemblance to some of the jungles in South and Central America, he spent the first few years of the war fighting in as a tank driver. The worst times of those first few years were the two times his tank had been disabled, and he had basically been forced to join the infantry or be left alone in the jungle. Those infantry marches had a similar sensation to this one.

Their tension grew with every meter traveled deeper into the jungle using a path that kept the long thin pond to their right-hand side. It was broken when Duuca suddenly said over team chat “Found a group of mobs, about 50 yards in front of us, some sort of small 14-unit group of monkey like things. They’re called “Mutated Monkey”. Looks like this might be a hazard area. The mobs are all level 100 and I think they’re hazard caliber.

Hazard caliber was double normal hit points, basically it was weaker then a raid dungeon, the dangers in a hazard area were usually different from a raid. Raid dungeons typically were carefully balanced for an 8-person party. They had variable difficulties you could set and high rewards. Hazard areas usually were “guarding” some content the game designers don’t want you to get to too easily, or to provide a group questing environment (most quests can be done solo). Mark never heard anything about anything interesting in this valley, which means this was probably a “quest” spot for some level 100 party questing. Furthermore, if you’re not careful about how you move around you can quickly get swamped by mobs, as unlike a dungeon mobs will roam around, get attracted by fighting, and simply swarm a party to death, and of course this led to the other reason hazard areas were hated in Underworld, the death penalties in them were not reduced. The death penalty in a RAID was ¼ your XP toward your next level and there never was a danger of losing a level, meanwhile hazard areas were treated like anywhere else for purpose of death.

The party paused at Duuca’s warning, several members looked at Eztli. Eztli sighed. “I don’t know if we can do this. I think our party composition is good, but if we end up drawing the agro of more than two groups we’ll probably wipe. The biggest problem as you all know is our damage will be seriously reduced and the damage these mobs do to us will be seriously increased. The bright side is we’ll probably level pretty fast in here if we can keep from dying, we’re dealing with mobs on average 30 levels higher then us, which means we probably will be able to level up every other mob we face for a while, I really need to find a python, so I’ll vote to continue, just want you all to know the troubles we’ll face going forward.

Duuca pipped up over the chat “I want to try as well” and soon the rest of the party was agreeing to give it a try.

After organizing themselves to fight the monkeys, Duuca shot an arrow at one of the monkeys drawing the pack’s agro, then sprinted back to their party, getting behind the tanker, who used his taunt on the pack of “Mutated Monkeys”

The pack was raving mad by the time it reached the tank, and leapt on him as if to tear him apart, meanwhile the AOE damage started to rain on the monkeys, while Eztli waved his wand and cast blood field, and the debuff “Bad Luck is Contagious,” then followed up with the curse “blood wounds.”

Blood Wounds: Single target curse, causes all damage dealt to foe to create “bleeding wounds”, no non-magic first aid will stop the bleeding, blood splatters from the wounds when formed, causing bleeding wounds on every foe the blood splatters on at the location of the blood splatter. Damage: level+blood magic affinity per second bleeding damage per wound. COST: +1 MP per wound per second).

Blood Wounds was a nice spell, depending on its use it could even function as something akin to a half nuke, but it was a double-edged sword, due to the extreme speed the wounds spread the cost of maintaining it could balloon and it was easy to kill yourself if you’re using blood casting, and just as easy to drain yourself of mana if you’re not. As a result, he tried to avoid the spell excepting in 1v1 PvP or cases like this one, where everyone was going to be doing low damage, and at the moment, only 14 foes were in battle, making it moderately possible to manage the exploding costs of the spell. Of course, he didn’t cast blood casting, he was a seriously worried about that ballooning cost of the spell.

Sure, enough the effects of the spell on a tightly bunched 14 creature group were as spectacular as he recalled. Once the curse hit one of the monkeys an AOE landed on the group, which caused an explosion of blood from the first monkey, the blood splattered on half the group which then caused an explosion of blood which covered the whole group, over and over again like a recursive bit of code without an end condition. The damage effected by each blood wound was tiny, just 2 or 3 hps due to the mitigation due to the level difference, however here was where Eztli’s incredibly deep Magic Pool came into effect. Thanks to all those silver rated items and those 9 extra levels his MP was a little bit over 100,000; he kept a close eye on his MP, the problem was the spell only took magic once every second not once per wound creation. In the first second 323 MP was drained, on the next his MP was drained completely, and an astronomical amount of damage popped up on the heads of every ape, ranging from as low as 72,325 damage to the high end of 272,976. In an instant 8 of the 14 apes died, and his SP instantly recharged to full as his hit level 77, he didn’t even have a chance to register what just happened as the curse hit one more time before he could even cancel it, wiping out the last 4 monkeys and draining his MP to zero again. Only for the blood field to recharge it back up to 2000 with their death.

Eztli’s legs collapsed under him from the two waves of mana exhaustion that hit him just a second apart and quickly canceled his blood field. The sensation that mana exhaustion felt like was something akin to your stomach being pulled out of your mouth, while finishing a 40km marathon. It wasn’t like this in the old Underworld. In the old Underworld you got hit with a status debuff of your movement. This was far more uncomfortable, it was both painful and unexpected which was why when it happened twice in a second, he collapsed to the ground pale faced.

It took a moment to overcome the shock of the magic loss, then Eztli stood up, the party was looking at him confused. Eztli sighed and shared the details of Blood Wound with them. “It’s actually more useful in one on one pvp, then it is on full mobs like you just saw. It spreads exponentially faster the more foes there are and can drain you of all your magic in moments like it just did to me twice. On the bright side it can do devastating damage in the right controlled situations.” He glanced at the party information and saw most of the party leveled up. “I wanted to try it to see the effect here, I won’t be casting that again unless we’re in a tight spot.”

The group moved forward and soon was embroiled in a number of long drawn out skirmishes with these monkeys. The level split was so large killing the mobs of monkeys was difficult as all heck, had the party not been heavy in good AOE it would have been hard to handle as they were hard to hit with single targeted attacks. The person Eztli was most concerned about was Golden_Flower, who was the lone healer in the party and was stretched to her limits to keep the tanker on his feet through each encounter. On the bright side, leveling was rather good here, in a little under 4 hours of grinding through this mess, they had raised everyone up to level 70 at a min, and 5 members of the party were now level 80 or higher (Eztli had reached level 84, and was now actively participating with AOE of his own with blood balls, as his attacks were doing a significant amount of damage now the level difference had shrunk a bit).

Eztli watched Musashi_XXX finish off the last monkey with a spectacular cut of his Macuahuitl, decapitating it, and sighed with a little exhaustion. They had accidently run into 3 straight groups each one just as they killed off the prior group of monkeys, leading to a tight running battle, that saw Fish_Lover get killed when the last group of monkeys hit them from behind before the prior group had been finished off; In this small crisis, Eztli regained control of the battle with a well-timed and placed Blood Wounds which helped shore up a flank and allow the tanker SpikieBoi get control of the agro again. Now the battle had ended Eztli realized he didn’t know where they were anymore. He couldn’t see the pond/swamp, and the canopy of trees was so thick he couldn’t see the valley walls or overhang. He was troubled by the fact he had heard that the plants were the biggest problem here yet all they fought this afternoon were monkeys.

Eztli looked over at Golden_Flower who was bent over Fish_Lover’s corpse rising him from the dead. “Golden_Flower, is there any indication of where these pythons are supposed to be?” He asked.

She finished casting the spell then cast a healing spell on Fish_Lover to get his hit point up over 1, and then answered “No. This whole valley apparently is the quest location.”

“Maybe we’re going about this wrong,” Sexy_Librarian added “Pythons should be in or near the water, the only place we’ve not gone is near the water. Perhaps we don’t need to go deeper into the valley we just need to search the water.”

“I’m game” Musashi_XXX tossed in, “Anything other then more of those screeching Monkeys.”

“It’s a good plan, but where is the water?” Eztli added

“That way” 7 people pointed, and all 7 were pointing in a different direction.