Entering the “dungeon” was child’s play. Eztli showed the rest just how simple it was by simply falling from the tree into the weeds below and “vanished” straight into the instanced dungeon. The others swallowed their fear one by one, and lay down in the weeds, vanishing right behind him. Soon the silence that reigned over this region of the valley faded away, as first bugs then animal then monster noises started to echo again. The patch of vegetation long faded away, leaving the black dirt of the forest floor whole and undisturbed.

For Eztli, the world had gone black, and all his senses dead, when he fell into the vines, simulating, he supposed, that he had gone unconscious. It was a disconcerting sensation, similar to how it felt just as he logged into the system, or logged out, however the sensation of “nothing” seemed to stretch for minutes instead of moments. Eventually his senses returned and he found himself trussed up, dangling from a wall, it was pitch black, he couldn’t see a thing, but what was suspending him felt similar to the vines on the surface. He heard his own breathing, and the sound of water, judging by how wet his back felt, and the stench of stagnant water, he suspected this was someplace near the pond/stream they were looking for.

He purposefully kept silent, and waited to see if his eyes would adjust to the low light. After several minutes of dangling with no light, he had to admit he still couldn’t see, and sight likely wouldn’t return unless he made a source of light himself. He slowly moved his right hand and waited to see if the vines would react. He felt no life from the vines tying him to the walls, but he wanted to be sure before moving around too much.

Deciding it might be safe enough to cut himself free he checked his status just to be sure there wasn’t any particular status issues.

----------------------------------

Character: Eztli

Age: 18

Social Status: Aztec Noble

Class: NONE

Level: 84 (2,367,481/3,486,000)

Hit Points (0.5+0.2): 23,050

Magic Points (0.8+0.3): 107,091

Defense: 126 + 160 = 286

Strength: 110 (5%) = 116

Agility: 100 + 20 (5%) = 126

Constitution: 326 + 30 (10%) = 392

Wisdom: 954 + 100 (10%) = 1159

Intelligence: 220 + 10 (5%) = 242

Charisma: 100 + 20 (5%) = 126

Willpower: +17

Poison/Disease Resistance: +3

Pain Resistance: +3

Reflexes: +1

Skill Trees: 3/8

Blood Magic

Bless and Curse (Shamanic Version)

Animal Form (Quetzalcoatl Version)

Skills: 0/10

Bonus Skills: Cannibalism, Intimidation (+22)

Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (10/10), Inca (10/10)

Knowledge: Religion: Aztec Gods (Max)

Affinities: Blood Magic (+124), Shamanic Magic (+41), Air Magic (+1), Spirit Magic (+100)

Items:

Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian), Ceremonial Macuahuitl, Ancient Bone Wand (Weapon1 Slot, Silver, +20 Wisdom, +20% magic damage), Shaman’s Teocuitlatl (Earing1 Slot, Gold, +100 Spirit Magic, +20 Wisdom), Fine Hemp Cactli (Shoes slot, Silver, +10 defense, +20 Constitution), Plated Greaves (Shin slot, Silver, +40 Defense, +5% HP), Jaguar Leather Paldrons (Shoulder slot, Silver, +10 defense, +10 agility, +5% HP), Beautiful Noble Maxtlatl (Pants Slot, Silver, +10 CHA, +10 Wisdom, +10% MP), Fine Cotton Timahtli (Cloak Slot, Silver, +20 wisdom, +10% MP), Battle Ichahuipilli (Chest Armor, Silver, +100 defense, +10 Constitution, +10% HP), Wrist Guard (Arm1 Slot, Silver, +10 defense, +10 agility), Bone Necklace (Neck Slot, Silver, +20 Wisdom, +10% MP), Gold Bangle (Wrist1 Slot, Silver, +10 Intelligence, +10 Wisdom)

Relations:

(none)

Accolades:

Perfect Clear: 5% to all attributes

Top of the World (Tenochtitlan): 5% to Constitution

Tattoos (Magic):

Quetzalcoatl: 5% to Wisdom, +1 Affinity with Air Magic, +1 Affinity with Shamanic Magic

Status Effects:

BOUND

----------------------------------

Eztli pondered the bound status a long moment. He didn’t have any skills which would allow him to escape such a status, his hands were trapped which meant he couldn’t cast a spell either. This meant he’d have to cut, rip or untangle himself. Of all his base stats, agility was slightly higher then strength, but both were so bad it was unlikely he’d get free any time soon.

He looked at the party screen and saw everyone’s name was still grayed out, meaning this cell (if it was a cell) was still considered a unique instance compared to the rest. Prison areas in Underworld used to work just like this.

Eztli spent almost 10 minutes getting his right arm free, once it was free, he quickly changed shape into a hawk and slipped free from the rest of the bindings. To his disappointment, the hawk eyes couldn’t see anything in this black, so rather than kill himself by flying into a wall, the moment he slipped free from the vines he dropped to the floor and changed back to a man

Eztli felt around a bit and realized he was indeed in a prison, the stone walls were wet, the floor was covered with shallow water, and the cell was roughly circular. After some more feeling around he figured he found the door, which felt like a stone boulder blocking the path out. Pondering a moment, he gave the boulder a shove. It didn’t move. He backed away from the boulder and moved along the wall, to put the boulder out of direct view, if he could see anything, then sat down on the floor of the cell. He had been in a jailcell smaller and fouler then this after the war. Being a high-status prisoner, he had been placed in solitary confinement almost immediately. Those had been some difficult days, but compared to that cell, this stone cave was far more humane. He waited patiently, knowing this game was (at its core) fundamentally “fun”, or it had been. Assuming this wasn’t a new event, Underworld probably wouldn’t leave its players in a jail cell for long, because that’s not “fun”.

His faith in old Underworld was soon rewarded and amusingly punished as he soon heard something similarly to dog’s growling speech coming from the other side of the boulder. Of course, the game wouldn’t leave him in a cell for long, however the dog noises spelled a different type of disaster. His skin turned cold the moment he heard those voices. In the Aztec region there was a type of creature known as an Ahuizotl, a dog like creature with damp fur that clumped up into spike like protrusions. It was particularly cruel and enjoyed eating human eyes, nails, and flesh, and its tail had a hand like thing. He remembered stories about what a pain it was to fight these in Underworld because they were crafty and used a lot of shamanic magic. Worse they were about the size of a man, making their physical threat almost as grave as the magic one.

With a rumble, the boulder started to move, without waiting for the situation to turn worse, he quickly cast blood field, he didn’t cast blood casting as he assumed the Ahuizotl probably had a lot of magic points, making the advantages of blood casting sort of pointless. He then cast Bless on himself, the bonus wasn’t worth much, but solo against an Ahuizotl in close quarters combat for a spell casting build was probably a death sentence if it was more then 5 levels higher then him. Considering they were in a level 100 area the chances it’s a raid level 100 Ahuizotl was pretty good. Hearing the boulder move some more, light started to filter into the cell, Eztli raised his wand and did the initial movements for Bad Luck is Contagious (BLiC). This debuff plus blood wounds wouldn’t be able to display their might due to the fact it was probably just one on one, but they still were useful in PvP, so he had every intention to use both. The moment he saw something move at the edges of the door he cast BLiC, the monster didn’t agro, as the spell didn’t draw agro or even count as an attack to monsters in this world. He then cast blood wounds on it. Just like BLiC the curse itself didn’t generate agro initially, only after it was wounded would it start to generate aggression.

The Creature still hadn’t noticed he was free, so he cast his best single target damage spell before the door could open enough to allow it in. Blood spear lashed out, hitting the Ahuizotl, and a small 5,200 damage total popped up over its head, and the blood wounds triggered causing an explosion of blood, with a little -40 popping up. Wincing at the low damage and it’s outraged howls, his hands moved quickly as he cast “Blood Puppet”, to his dismay the creature resisted his “control” however, since it was not a sub boss tier creature it couldn’t resist the spell, meaning instead of controlling it, it’s blood boiled and exploded in it’s veins, the secondary damage caused by this spell was fairly good, but hard to trigger so he never really counted on it. Another damage figure popped up over the dark shape’s head reading -21,300

Eztli winced, it wasn’t worth the MP use for that much damage. Casting 20 blood spears would use up about the same mp, and do almost four times as much damage. His mind quickly did the math based on the assumption the Ahuizotl had 300k hitpoints, he’d need to cast blood puppet and get it to trigger the damage 15 times, or 15,000 MP and 21 seconds or so of battle; deciding it was worth the inefficiency for the fast victory, he cast blood puppet a second time, however luck or fate turned out differently than he expected, as this time he gained control of the Ahuizotl.

His plans for the inefficient win were dashed with a lucky easy win. He did a quick search of the Ahuizotl’s magic skills, finding nothing to kill itself with, he simply ordered the stupid beast to beat itself to death with it’s own tail-hand. It took almost 3 minutes to kill itself.

+213,000xp

+30,000 HP

+50,000 MP

He slipped out the door into the hall, while the opening wasn’t large enough for the hulking Ahuizotl to enter, it was more than large enough for him to slip out. The black stone hall was lit by magic stones which glowed with an eerie green light. The floor was covered in ankle deep water, making it very hard to walk without making noise. Without care for direction he started walking to his right, keeping his hand on the right wall, making turns with the right wall and following it for a while.

Eventually after walking for what seemed to be an hour, and killing 3 more Ahuizotl along the way, he reached a large black stone room with 10 Ahuizotl surrounding 3 of his party members, unconscious. They were Duuca, Musashi_XXX and Sexy_Librarian. The other members of the party were not there yet, and it seemed like the Ahuizotl were waiting for them to arrive. They were chatting with each other in with that strange guttural barking language they used. The room was little better then a large cave, black walls with green stone lights. In the center of the cave was a sacrificial altar and next to the altar was a small cage with an elderly looking priest of Huitzilopochtli bound within it. The priests name was in Gold, as if Eztli needed that type of visual prompting to know he was an important quest NPC. After examining the cave closer he realized his 3 party members were conscious, not unconscious like he had originally assumed. However, since they were still considered by the system to be imprisoned, they were still grey’ed out of his party list.

He got a pretty good idea of how this was supposed to go. Likely the rest of the party escaped, and just as likely they would eventually find themselves here. Once everyone was here the event in this dungeon would happen. So Eztli moved a little away from the entrance to the large room, and hid himself in a dark corner, waiting for someone to come along.

He didn’t have to wait long as he could head something making little effort to walk silently splashing its way down the hall toward him. Eztli held his breath, and stood motionless, then relaxed when xXx_Painbringer_xXx came into view, he was carrying a dead FISH_LOVER, and walking silently behind him was the large Spikieboi.

Eztli noted the moment the 3 came into view their names no longer were grey’ed out on the party list. Wincing at the pathetic state of FISH_LOVER, he looked the other two over, and nodded, he noted Golden_Flower still wasn’t there, and silently filled the three in over team chat. They set FISH_LOVER’s corpse down in the dark corner by Eztli, and waited with him. Several moments later Golden_Flower, alone, sneaked down the hallway on feet so silent Eztli saw her before he heard her. He found it curious she was able to escape on her own since she should have the lowest combat power of the whole group. Still she did have the 2nd highest level of the group, and her heals were strong enough he supposed she could simply outlast the Ahuizotl if she needed to in a protracted battle, and set the thought aside.

As soon as Eztli stood out and Golden_Flower spotted them, her name was colored on the team list. He left filling in Golden_Flower to the other guys and returned to the entrance of the large cavern while Golden_Flower healed up FISH_LOVER. Now they had a tanker, a melee DPS, and a healer, their chance in this raid just took a huge upswing, so now they needed to figure out how to rescue the rest of their party.

Eztli examined the room, and considered the spells he remembered the Ahuizotl had available and pondered how he’d deal with it in a normal dungeon raid. The problem is they didn’t really have any means to fight off the magic control spells these things had on hand. Nothing to resist them with, which means everyone would be rooted by the magic, and taking moderate damage. This would make the melee dps become pretty useless. He pondered for a moment and thought of two ways to deal with the mess, then withdrew from the doorway and rejoined the rest of the team, who were surrounding FISH_LOVER, who was mostly recovered.

“We’ll need to hurry, looks like our friends and a gold named NPC will be sacrificed and eaten soon. Maybe not in that order. Let’s try pulling them to the door if we can bunch them up and stay out of their direct line of sight we should be able to avoid the worst of their magic.”

Golden_Flower gave him a strange look, then said cautiously, “Magic? These things have magic?”

Eztli looked at her strangely then looked at the others, Spikieboi spoke up, “They never cast anything at me.” The others nodded in agreement. Eztli frowned ‘a bug?’ Bugs in old Underworld were damned near unheard of when he used to play. But then EAB had a reputation for releasing buggy games, he was rather surprised at how bug free underworld had been to this point, it’s launch not withstanding.

“Let’s pull them to the door to bunch them up, I don’t want to be swarmed any more than I want to be bombarded with spells” Eztli temporized, the others shrugged and agreed. The party made its way to the door, Eztli cast Blood Field, and then cast BLiC on one of the Ahuizotl in back, while FISH_LOVER cast a large AOE attack on the group.

The Ahuizotl went nuts, and charged the door, where Spikieboi started using his taunt to gain their agro, to Eztli’s surprise none of the Ahuizotl attempted to cast a spell, as they charged enraged at Spikieboi. From there it was a simple raid against a surprisingly weak foe, sure the Ahuizotl were akward to fight in melee, but they were primarily spell casters who at this moment were acting like melee dps. The xp was excellent, Eztli who was just 100k or so away from level 85 when the fight started ended up leveling up twice, ended at level 86 when the last one fell.

The party rushed into the room and freed their comrades from their bindings, then turned to the gold named npc in the cage.