20 days remain of contest A, Tuesday.

Logging in, I remember that I had not rested properly the previous evening to get experience, so I walk over and I sit next to the fire and close my eyes.

Resting: Experience gain 2000

Shard destroyed (2/6)

Bonegnawer Clan destroyed: Experience gain 1500

Bonegnawer Clan kills 22: Experience gain 2200

You have reached level 18!

Hide skill +1

That helps. I need to look through and add my level-up stats and see what is going on with my character sheet. I click on my character and take a look at where I am.

Nightflower: Shadow runner

Level: 18

Hit Points: 107 ((4*18)+(3*18)) - ((126/100)*15)

Infamy: -440 (Tombstone)

Damage: 27-49 +4-9 (PK) +25% (night) -25% (day)

+80% chance 3-8 for 30/6s

Stats:

STR: 2 (3: -1 PK)

WIL: 1

DEX: 15 (16: -1 PK)

Abilities:

Hide: 16 (14+2)

Slash: 4

Throwing knife: 6

Alchemy: 1

Modifiers:

Bonus: +25% damage at night. (Shadow)

Bonus: Attack speed +5 (Scout)

Bonus: Accuracy +5 ranged (Scout)

Negative: -25% damage during day. (Shadow)

Negative: -15% health (Scout)

Hold breath: +60 seconds (Gear)

Other Skills:

Shadow net (Rank 1), +5-meter radius from player

per rank, all players and creatures slowed 50% for five-seconds.

Teleport (Rank 1), +10-meter teleport line-of-sight per rank.

* Familiar: Morrigan, Raven (Rank 3)

* PK=negatives and positives for player-killer infamy.

This tombstone has complicated things a bit, though I am used to it now. If I level up, hopefully that will get me the quest to remove the tombstone so I will finally be done with it. I click on the tombstone and look over its information again. My biggest character sheet hit is the -15% health for being a scout. I need to add some points to constitution to increase my hit points or I am going to start having serious problems. I have one stat point to spend, so I increase my constitution stat up from zero to one and my hit points raise to 122.

I see Briar and the other start logging in.

“Hey, we had some issues last night trying to get into the area where we think the shard is,” Briar says, his voice sounding strained. “There are some creatures there we need to get through. We wiped up there and are coming back now, luckily everything hasn’t respawned.”

“I think if we use my Djinn Ifriti summon we will stand a better chance this time,” Roll chimes in, clearly in a good mood. “The colossus didn’t do well against those bat things and they swarmed us one by one.”

“Djinn? You mean the fire thing?” asks Briar.

“Thorn, I hope them targeting me was a random thing. Otherwise if mobs know to target and kill the healers, we are going to have a lot more trouble going forward. If that is the case, we will need Sil3nt to come help us out.” Bumblebzz says, using Briar and Kian’s character names, which confused me for a second.

“Stop at the cave and rest up to get experience for the shard we killed,” I say.

Kian appears in a brilliant cloud of sparks that spread out from his feet.

“Kian, I have an idea where another shard might be,” I say outside of our vocal chat. He nods, and I see that he looks tired and his buffs have worn off, while mine are still active. Kian must have logged in after I logged off last night to check on Briar.

“Hey, guys, keep us posted, we are going to try to find another shard,” I say in our voice channel.

***

“You are going to do what?” Kian asks, looking at the lake at the center of the valley.

“I’m going search for a shard down there.” I point at the lake. “I think there might be one in there, and I have this belt that lets me hold my breath a really long time.” I rest my hand on my belt.

“I’m not going down there.”

“You don’t have to. I got it,” I say and then dive into the lake.

Once underwater, I get a new status bar for air, which has two minutes on the timer. I go deeper down and swim along the muck and the plants. There are toothy fish swimming around and giving me a wide berth, but I don’t see anything here and my oxygen bar is dropping. After surfacing, I see Kian on a rock along the shoreline and I wave.

Changing my mind I say, “This might take a while; you sure you don’t want to help?”

Then laughs, “I thought you said you got it?”

We move farther along the coast and I dive at each spot, finding nothing. At several points along the shore we have to kill monsters that come out to attack us, a group of hyenas and several huge reptiles. By the end of the day, we have covered roughly half of the shore of the lake.

“We got it!” Briar suddenly breaks into the voice comms channel

Fenmalain Soul Crystal destroyed (3/6)

I swim out of the water as fast as I can.

“We need to hide!” I shout, and I feel the ground rumble and the water of the lake begins to ripple with energy.

We dive into a patch of low scrub brush and look up just as the dragon explodes from the lake surface. It flaps its giant wings in the air, flinging water in huge gushes all across the shoreline, and all over us in the bushes.

The dragon roars, and I feel panic well up in my throat, but I manage to swallow it. I see Kian begin to get up to run, and I grab his legs and climb on him to stop him from bolting. The dragon must have fear as one of its innate abilities. I have a powerful feeling to flee. The game must be tapping into the primitive parts of the brain and manipulate that for the effect. I can only guess at the intricacies involved with that.

“Briar… Thorn,” I add Briars in-game name for the sake of FaydeOut. ” You guys need to get out of there, now,” I shout into the voice channel. I speak louder than I meant to.

I hear huffing. “We’re running… as fast… as we can,” Briar says breathlessly.

We watch the dragon reach one of the peaks, flying around in a large circle and then using its breath weapon all along the side. Hovering for a moment, the dragon flaps its wings and lands high in the mountain near a pass and disappears into what I can only imagine is a cave.

“Oh ginga!” I hear FaydeOut say, which is cut off by a loud sound and then silence.

I see his icon grey.

We wait for what must have been an hour before the dragon returns and circles the lake, landing on the opposite side from us and sliding into the water. I get up to try to see what it does. Based on the water movement, there is an underwater cave the dragon is going into.

“I’m back at the cave after being killed,” FaydeOut says, “though I need to go to sleep soon. I didn’t sleep well last night. Good job though, we took that crystal down.”

“I need to go to sleep as well,” Kian says.

I nod, feeling like I need sleep myself. We have been going at this instance pretty hard these last few days and it is taking its toll.

I say goodbye and I log out.

***

19 days remain of contest, a Wednesday.

As soon as I wake and start up the game I start diving in the lake, not waiting for Kian to log in. I move farther down the waterfront, being careful of any creatures that may be along the shore ready to attack. The shoreline is lightly wooded here, and farther on I see a large rock with a lagoon below it. There’s a keyhole-shaped indentation in the shoreline that I couldn’t see until I got to this point.

I dive here, and it’s different from anywhere else in the lake that I have seen; the water is clear and much deeper than other areas. My concern is that it is a little too close to the area the dragon rises from, but I need to find out if a shard is here.

I come up for air several times and continue closer to the large rock. Diving as deep as I dare, I spot a small cave. I approach the cave, and inside I can see a shard. Once at the entrance my perception lights it up. There are two large freshwater crabs that look like rocks with plants growing on their backs. They will likely be made aware of my presence as soon as I get any closer. I resurface and make my way to the shore and wait.

The party all log in shortly after, and I explain my find.

“Let’s lure them out to the shoreline while two of us go down and smash that thing,” Roll says. “My Colossus should be able to tank them.”

“Okay, as soon as you guys get here we can set up our trap,” I say, sitting on my rock, waiting.

Once everyone has arrived, I volunteer to be the bait and dive into the lagoon. As I suspected, both crabs awaken as I approach and move swiftly toward me, and I barely stay ahead of them on my way to the shore. Once at the shore they follow me out of the water, pincers snipping at my legs. Then the Colossus summon flanks them and knocks both sideways. I teleport back along the lightly sanded coastline, about thirty feet. I let the party keep them busy as Kian and I both dive back into the water and swim to the cave. Upon entering, we see the crystal with the living smoke inside, churning and longing for release.

Thud, thud, goes Kian’s hammer, and I make smaller thuds with my knife. He has to go back up for air, but I continue with a thud and thud as the resonance of each hit gets louder under the water. I place a hand on the shard and give it a final stab and it crumbles with the shockwave rippling across the underwater landscape.

Fenmalain Soul Crystal destroyed (4/6)

Time to move.

I swim as fast as I can, and when I am at the shore I can feel the lake rumble. We run around the other side of the large rock and to a depression we found. Inside we had fashioned camouflage of sorts. We made a cover of sticks, grass and branches that we can throw over ourselves to hide. The hope is that leaving the summoned tank on the shore will keep the beast from finding us.

I dive into the hiding spot just as I hear the roar. Though, the dragon did not get airborne. It swims to the shore and with one quick breath it destroys the Colossus on the shoreline, we watch the icon disappear and hope it is enough.

“Wh—ere are—the—small—ones—the ones—who wish to free—it?” We hear the dragon hiss and spit, its mouth working the words around its sword-like teeth.

I look at Briar and hold my finger to my lips—if briar even thinks of talking.

We hear the beast crash around the area and inspect the dead crabs. Finally, the dragon issues a long sigh that sounds like a gravel truck as it slides back into the water. Kian starts to get up, but I pull him back down and point to Morrigan in the sky. He nods, and I sit down and close my eyes.

As Morrigan, I am flying above us and can see the dragon in the water. It is on the other side of the rock with its head above the water and its body below. It is listening and smelling. It pays Morrigan no mind, as she seems very interested in the dead crabs, and there are other birds circling.

I open my eyes and put my finger to my lips and motion a typing gesture. Bringing up the virtual keyboard, I type out what I saw into the chat channel. We decide to move silently inland as fast and as quiet as possible; we need to make it to the boats. We set out quickly, storing any armor or loud gear away so we don’t make noise walking. We scurry, trying to get distance from the rock in case the dragon decides to fly into the air looking for us. I occasionally check back with Morrigan to see what the dragon does. After a long time, it swims silently back into the lake and disappears, its ridged back breaching the water and the tail perfectly following it. The ripple in the lake spreads out slowly.

“Did you guys hear that thing talk?” I ask once I feel we are far enough away.

“That was terrifying,” Briar says.

I nod, thinking of the shards. I am not sure why I keep the secret of how I know of the shards from them, but I don’t want them to know where I am getting my information. I don’t want Roll to go back and tell Sauce that there is hidden knowledge he could use in the game. It’s my competitive advantage right now, and I need to keep it a secret from everyone, even Kian and Briar. As for the shards, I don’t know what happens when we break the final one, but the last one will surely be in the dragon’s lair itself.

I look at the sky and check my game clock—we are running out of time. We have only a few hours left of today, and then we only have tomorrow to finish this. Then it will be Friday and Josie and her clan will try to take the Jade Fortress. We have to stop them from taking that strategic point at any cost—it will tilt the playing field too much against us. Also, we have to complete this quest before her clan members, who have been working on a similar story quest, complete theirs. Though, given the nature of this quest I am of the mind that these story quests seemed designed to be the most difficult in the game. This is not standard MMO playstyle in here: this is all about using your head and not just charging in to smash everything.

We travel across the valley floor, each of us looking over our shoulders as we walk and trying to catch a glimpse of doom before it eats us. I give Kian and Briar knowing glances as we look at the sky and our surroundings. Each of us are becoming aware that we may have to fight the dragon to finish this instance, not something any of us have a desire to do.

After a short time, we reach the end of the valley and can observe the sheer cliff face that dominates this end. There are similar cliffs on the far end of the valley. The rock wall with a chasm and natural bridges into the stone giants’ cave. On this end of the valley there is no chasm; however, there is lapping water going up to the cliff face. The wall rises, to what must be, a thousand feet. At the bottom of the cliff face is the front entrance to a drowned temple. It is clearly manmade with carved, ancient columns rising up covered in flowering vines. Birds nest in the cliff face and create a cacophony of sound as we approach the dock. I can see some turtles along the shore and large fish lazily floating away at our approach.

“We can fit a max of four in one boat,” Kian says matter-of-factly. “They look sound, but old. The oars are here and are in good shape.” He hops into one and tests its balance.

“Should we tie the boats together so we don’t get separated?” Roll asks.

“If we did that, we could end up getting caught up on all kinds of things,” Kian says. “It would actually be more dangerous to tie them together.” He looks around at the shoreline. “If, for instance, a giant turtle eats one of the boats whole, it would drag the second boat down as well.”

Roll, looking at the turtles on the shore, appears sick and says, “Yeah, let’s not do that.”

We climb into the boats: me, Bumblebzz, and Briar in the first boat and Kian and FaydeOut in the second. Manning oars, we push off into the lake and begin rowing silently toward the entrance of the temple. We take in the expanse of the scene. The cliff and the cold expanse of water mesmerize us. No one speaks to break the moment as the sun disappears over the valley edge. We drift into shadow, and our approach to the temple startles a group of birds who fly out.

Once we are closer, we can see that the columns around the front are decorated with deeply carved runes under the vines. There are words etched over the entrance which are worn and covered in vines and roots, the effect is of age. I’ve not been paying close attention to how beautiful the world is, and I take a moment to savor the game world before Briar lets out a hoot.

“Ginga, what was that!” he asks as a large fish swims away.

Laughing, we row into the temple, pulling out torches for those who can’t see in the dark. The columns continue on the inside, and in the clear water I can see that there are fish and other creatures below us in the water. Nothing huge or dangerous, but enough to keep my nerves on edge. Ahead of us is a broken wall, and the water continues through it.

The water here moves on its own farther into the cavern. The rate is slow, however, and is not alarming. The walls here reach up in the darkness. Peering forward, I can see that ceiling is about sixty feet up, but near the torchlight the ceiling is not visible. The walls here are naturally smooth and have a pinkish hue. Occasional long roots that look like threads hang down low near the water as the narrow cavern winds its way through the earth.

After three-hundred yards of winding cavern, the water is still and deep and there is a natural split in the cave. One branch goes left, from which I can hear what sounds like white noise, and the other side is a quiet, narrow.

To the right the cavern stops in a still area of water with rocks sticking out and has a horrible smell which I cannot place. It smells sickly. The rocks look as if something covers them in stinky bird droppings of some kind. There are more of the roots coming down from above. FaydeOut tries to push our boat away from one of the rocks and grabs at one of the roots to pull us over.

“This root is super sticky—” He’s cut off as he is violently drawn up into the darkness where I hear the squeaking and chirrups of thousands of bats.

We all start yelling and Roll begins summoning, while still sitting in the boat. I can hear FaydeOut screaming above, apparently in a fight. I take an oar and hold on tightly as I wrap one of the sticky vines around it, which then pulls me up into darkness.

With the momentum I get I’m launched over the back of a creature perched on a ledge. It looks like a cross between a scorpion and a slug. My inspection reveals it to be a Cave Fisher and it relies on its sticky strands to catch unsuspecting creatures. There are two of them here—one has FaydeOut stuck and is he is trying to defend himself. His hit points are going down fast. The one that pulled me up is trying to bite the oar.

I hear Roll still chanting below as I raise my knife and begin to try flanking this thing.

You for 42 (+8 flanking) damage (poison immune)

Pulling my knife out of its body, I see it is almost dead, but the creature whips around and knocks me against the wall and spits at my leg.

Cave Fisher hits you for 22 damage (rooted)

I can’t move my leg; the Cave Fisher readies itself while closing the short distance with little clicks of its feet on the stone. The light and heat of fire erupts below. In the brief illumination, I can see hundreds of bats in the air. The front pinchers of the Cave Fisher move to snip my arms. I begin a swing and teleport behind the Cave Fisher attacking FaydeOut, where I bury my knife into its carapace.

You hit Cave Fisher for 38 (+12 backstab) damage (poison immune)

Cave Fisher dies.

The Cave Fisher thrashes around in death throes as FaydeOut gets up. I turn and leap to the one that had been attacking me, and with a double-handed overhead stab I slash it with a devastating critical blow.

You critically hit Cave Fisher for 53 (+12 critical) damage (poison immune)

Cave Fisher dies.

I turn to FaydeOut and see that he is downing a health potion. I look over the side and I see that Roll has summoned his Djinn summon which is busy frying bats and burning the dangling strings from other fishers.

I look at FaydeOut and say, “Looks like we have only one way down.” I kick the body of the Cave Fishers over the side and then jump to the icy water below.

***

“Well, that was fun,” I say, back in the boat and dry—the game dries players within about thirty seconds of getting out of the water. For some reason I think about how if we didn’t dry so fast there would be a lot of comfort issues, especially with leather, in a fantasy setting.

FaydeOut gives me a knowing look. “Thanks, Nightflower, I won’t be touching anything dangling from the ceiling for a long time.” He waves his hand in a mock gesture at another dangling filament near the split where we had gone right.

As we take the left channel of the cavern, the noise I had heard earlier gets louder and I realize what is going on.

“Sounds like we are going to be going into some rapids,” I say, feeling a frown on my face.

The boats get to faster-moving water and we have to use the oars to keep away from the walls and off of rocks in the channel. The cavern narrows more, and we do everything we can to slow our speed.

“We need to be ready to jump off this boat if there is a waterfall up here,” I say loud enough that the second boat can hear. I turn to them with a smile and say, “We will let you guys know if we need to abandon ship.”

After another ten minutes of us navigating the water the channel widens and slows, and we are able to get the boats to the side of the channel. I can see ahead and that it looks like we will be entering into a very large cavern.

“We are about to go into the open up there,” I say as I point. “I think one of us should go forward and scout it out.”

Everyone simply looks at me.

“Oh,” I say as they smile. “I figured I should give someone else a chance!”

We row a short way up farther. Moving silently in the shadows, I enter the cavern and see a patch of Shrieker mushrooms to the right of the path the water takes. Shrieker mushrooms are great intruder alarms, hearing a sound they let out a piercing shriek so loud it can cause damage. If we had continued, they would have made a huge amount of noise and woken every creature in this instance up. In fact, as I look at it, I realize they are too perfectly placed, as if they were planted. I make my way past them and use a Teleport to get to a ledge. I make my way around the edge so I can get far away from the Shriekers and let the guys know in voice comms.

As I come down from the ledge, I see the cavern is an amazing world of many varieties of giant fungus. Right in the center of the room is a crystal shard, surrounded by several massive fungus which are called Death Spores. These showed up in several historical MMORPGs from my SAINT course. If you inhale the spores they spray at you, you will fall asleep and be poisoned. I slink up and notice there are four bodies in this area which look like they were dragged from near the Death Spore mushrooms.

Through the mountain (story) : Objectives 12/15

Clearly, we are on the right path and this will be the fifth shard. I type in the party channel to avoid speaking so we don’t set off the Shriekers and that I found a shard. They will need to stay put for a bit while I continue to explore.

Following the water through the cavern leads to another tunnel ahead, and there are additional ledges along the top above it. From the entrance I came in, to the right is radiating warmth—I move carefully. I pass a pool of water, hearing what sounds like deep, low breathing around the corner, so I dip into the pool to hide. The pool lights up and start for a second and almost run away before I get a notice.

Use the healing pool of the dragon Vizizwrack: +1 Constitution, permanent.

Oh wow, I needed that! And Vizizwrack is the dragon’s name.

My hit points jump to 138 with the addition of the stat point. I slink out of the water and peek around the corner and see the dragon Vizizwrack apparently sleeping on a mound with bones all around him in huge piles. Behind him is deep pool, apparently his entrance and exit to the lake. Even while sleeping, the dragon stills looks ominous and I have to fight down the urge to run. I am sure the loot here would be great, but I don’t think we can take this thing.

I back away into the cavern and slowly return to the party, a plan in my mind. Let’s see if they go for it.

***

“This plan is crazy,” says FaydeOut and Bumblebzz at the same time.

“Let’s do it,” Briar chimes in, turning to wink at me.

Roll summons the Colossus and we sneak up to the Shriekers. Kian swapped to being a cleric and has a silence skill. He jumps around the corner and casts silence on the Shriekers. I dash forward in the silence, slicing them at the base. I assume they will grow back in a few days, but for now they won’t wake up the freight-train of burning death sleeping a few hundred feet away. The cooldown on his silence spell is ten minutes, but we should be okay. The dragon only attacks when a shard is broken.

Leaving the Colossus by the Shard we continue on all the way through the main cavern to the exiting tunnel. We stash the boats around a corner in the narrow cavern leading from the main cavern. Climbing up onto the ledge with Roll and FaydeOut, we can see the whole cavern; Roll is just at the edge of his summoning control. FaydeOut has his bow at the ready and what looks like an explosive arrow nocked.

In the voice communications, I say, “Ready?”

“Ready,” from all.

Roll’s hands begin to move as his control of the Colossus resumes. The summon steps forward, and we hear a dull “thud.”

Thud, thud—

Louder and louder the strikes brain-splitting screech and a rumble of movement as the dragon wakes. Roll is trying to maintain his concentration and as the dragon comes into sight. The steady sounds of the sacrificial Colossus doing its work resonates in the cavern.

Thud, THUD… Louder and louder with each strike.

The dragon frantically claws its way to the water and breathes in as its torso glows with magical light. With an exhale, the dragon kills the summon and the Colossus icon fades away in a cloud of steam.

“Now!”

FaydeOut fires his arrow, which sails true to the source and explodes with a final thud that releases the breath of the crystal. Power explodes out in waves of smoke and steam. From the cloud the dragon’s head appears first and is then followed by its body, charging toward us and wings folding in. I catch a quick glimpse of the notification scroll past.

Fenmalain Soul Crystal destroyed (5/6)

“RUN!” FaydeOut yells as we charge back along the narrow ledge to get to the boats.

I am running behind Roll, who leaps as soon as we round the corner, arms and legs still moving in mid-air. I step, then plant my left foot at the very edge, leaping directly after him. Directly behind me, FaydeOut leaps as the billowing rush of steam and death press us down into the water.