First Group

Waking in my bed the next day, I actually felt refreshed, as if that horrible death from the mine never happened. Except, there was a phantom pain in my shoulder that still ached. Perhaps that would be a good reminder, as sort of a reminder to not take this world as lightly has I did before.

Getting out of bed, I walked down to the lobby to speak to Isbeil. Since she seemed to want to know everything about everyone, I needed some information.

“Isbeil, I have a question if you’re able to answer it,” I asked the old dark elf that sat behind the counter.

“Sure sweety, you know that old Isbeil will help when you need it,” she responded to me with a smile on her face and a look that said that she knew what I was going to ask.

“Do you know of any other… veil-walkers… that will be going to the mines today?” I asked her. She closed her eyes as if she was deep in thought, and then opened them again.

“Yes, I heard a group of them, I think it was three if I’m not mistaken. They were talking to each other saying how they were going to go to the apothecary to get some potions before heading up that way. If you leave now, I’m sure that you’ll be able to meet up with them, since it wasn’t that long ago.”

Giving Isbeil a genuine smile, I gave her my thanks as I walked out of the inn. Instead of trying to catch up to them at the apothecary, I decided to meet them at the village entrance to see if they would allow me to group up with them. No way in hell would I try to take that dungeon again by myself. At least, not until I was significantly better geared and had several more abilities. With a light step, I made my way to the entrance, thinking how phenomenal it would be if I could actually get an unique skill.

I arrived at the gate and asked the guard if he’d seen a group of veil-walkers heading out of the village, and when he responded that he didn’t, I leaned up against the stone wall next to the entrance waiting for them. Growing a bit bored, I took out my rusted dagger and began tossing it in the air, flipping it, and then catching it before doing it again. For what seemed like an hour, although maybe only 10 minutes went passed, I finally saw the group of three players walking towards the exit of the village.

“Excuse me,” I said as they neared the entrance where I was standing. “I understand from Isbeil that you are all going to the mine. Would you mind if I tagged along,” I asked.

A tall, muscular dark elf with green hair looked at me. “He’s probably the tank, I wonder what kind,” I thought, since he was wearing plate armor.

“Sure, I don’t mind. What type of rogue are you?” he asked.

“Assassin,” I said briefly, hoping that they would consider my proposal. Assassins weren’t exactly the best at low levels.

“Do you guys mind,” he asked the other two in his group after he turned around to speak to them.

The other two members in his group looked to be a healer and a mage of some kind. However, they all had full sets of equipment, which would mean that that they were secondary characters, or alts as they are commonly referred as.

When the other two gave their consideration and approval for me to join them, he reached out with his hand and said, “I’m Adrian, dark knight. This is Kine, our priest, and Adrianne is an illusionist.”

After our introductions, a small window appeared to me asking me if I would like to join Adrian’s party, which I accepted.

“At least this function still worked,” I thought to myself.

On the left side of my vision, just far enough to not interfere with what I was seeing elsewhere, was the group window which showed their names, health, stamina, and mana bars, as well as the group buffs that the priest had casted on everyone. However, my information was still invisible to me. We started walking out of the village, and I let the three of them take the lead since there was no reason for me to be out front scouting.

I didn’t have much to say to the group as we walked, content to just see how this party interacted with each other. As we neared the mine, Adrian stopped and turned to look at everyone.

“Alright,” he began. “Once we get inside, we’ll give Kine some time to reapply buffs to everyone and then I’ll take lead. Since you look fairly new Raven, once I use either Taunt or Viscious Aura, that’s when you will want to use either your Backstab or Assassinate, whichever one you have the most points in. Just make sure to assist me with whatever I’m attacking, ok?”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now,” I started to think to myself. I finished my thought while taking some deep breathes, “Ok, calm down Raven. If I was in his shoes, I would think the same thing. People usually give their alts either a few platinum to gear out with, or have a set of crafted gear stored in their account vault to use. Since this is a blank account, I can see why he thinks I’m new.”

I replied out loud, in a meek voice that it was ok. I also let the group know that I had both Assassinate and Backstab at level 1. He looked at me and gave me a lopsided grin and nodded at me.

“Cool. I have a level 30 Assassin myself, so if you have any questions, you can always send me a message and I can give you some advice if you want,” he so kindly informed me, not knowing that I already had a level 149 Assassin even if it seemed like a lifetime ago now.

“Alright, let’s head on in,” he said, as he opened the door to the mine and entered it. I sighed, and the rest of us following him into the mine.

Into the Dungeon (Again)

“Kine, if you would please,” Adrian asked the priest as he took out his sword and swung the kite shield from his back to his left hand.

The priest started casting the few buff spells he had access to which would help to make this run quite a bit easier than it was when I tried it earlier by myself. Thinking about that, I shuddered. Adrianne must have seen the involuntary reaction, since she put her hand on my shoulder and asked me if I was okay, her eyes filled with concern.

“Yes, I’m fine. I was here earlier and, well, it didn’t go so well.” I responded to her, looking past her and into the mine.

“Don’t worry Raven, it might seem real, but just remember that it’s only a game. You can log out whenever you want,” she said, trying to raise my spirits.

“You’re right, I’m fine,” I said with a smile, secretly wondering how she would deal with the pain and how she would deal with not being able to log out.

Once Kine finished with his spells, Adrian started moving down the mine. A few minutes into the mine, we reached the bend where I died at, no sign of those damned infernal rats. However, we did start to hear the pick-axes of the goblins hitting the rocks with their picks. I couldn’t believe how close I was to the exit before I died.

Adrian got ready for combat as he walked around the bend as we followed. The goblin stopped it’s mining and looked at Adrian, it’s eyes narrowing as if it was wondering who we were and why humans would be in it’s home.

Adrian moved his shield so that it was in front of him, allowing him to block any frontal attacks as he moved closer to the goblin. While he was getting within range, I stepped into the shadows with my stealth ability as Kine got out his two-handed hammer and Adrianne pulled out her unlatched her staff from her back.

I moved to a better position, positioning myself between the goblin and the support. If the goblin resisted the dark knight’s taunts, it would rush to engage the support instead. If that happened, well, it didn’t know it, but it would need to go through me first.

However, since this was just a beginner’s dungeon, the goblin did not, in fact, resist Adrian’s taunts. I moved towards Adrian and the goblin, making sure to get behind the goblin without bumping into them. If that happened, then I would be forced out of the shadows, becoming visible and unable to use Assassinate.

After Adrian used one of his shield abilities, Bash, it stunned the goblin for a few seconds which allowed me to get into a good position to perform my Assassinate ability. I grabbed the goblin’s head, tilting it back as Adrian stepped closer, positioning his sword for a thrust type of attack.

“Assassinate,” I whispered into the goblin’s ear, slicing it’s throat open. The goblin’s body starting twitching in arms before I let it fall to the ground, dead.

“Damn Raven, over 500 damage with Assassinate. You must have a good amount of strength and agility for a crit that high,” Adrian said with what looked like admiration in his eyes.

“I guess, if you say so. I did a little bit of research on various builds before I started playing. Good timing with that Bash.” I responded as I walked back to the rear, allowing him to collect the loot from the corpse of the goblin.

At least I wouldn’t have to go digging around through the corpses that smelled like mold, death, and something even more unpleasant. The loot would be placed magically in our inventory as long as a group member collected it. After that, if the item was good enough, we could use dice to roll on it, usually in a need before greed type of honor system that was common.

Like this, we made our way further into the mine, if not a bit more slowly than I would have liked. We killed two more goblin miners before we reaching the first cavern. Even though we were only getting 7xp per miner, I managed to get to level 6, if by just enough. I now had 311/396 experience, even though I still hadn’t allocated the skills or abilities since we kept moving along. I didn’t want ask the group to pause during a push further into the mine.

There was also no indication of the horde of rats which made me more than a little bit curious as we reached the cavern that had the overseer with his eight miners. It was still in the center, yelling at his miners, “Skrah el’ech! Skrah el’ech!” Not knowing what that meant was starting to bother me, and I briefly thought to myself that I would need to start collecting language books so that I could understand various other creatures and races, even though everyone understood the languages of the races that players could create.

Adrian moved backwards a few steps before turning around and walking back to us, crouching on one knee as we did the same.

“Ok, it looks like we’ve all gotten a level, so let’s pause for a minute to get our levels sorted before we go in,” Adrian said as he looked at us.

Since it was a good idea anyways, I just nodded as I pulled up my stats and skill windows. Adding my stat points, I now had 25 strength, 17 dexterity, 32 agility, and 18 vitality. I also added my skill points into Assassinate, raising it’s level to level 4.

Closing the windows, I looked at Adrian and told him that I was good. After the others did the same, we stood, and Adrian looked at each of us as he smiled.

Turning around, he started walking back towards the cavern while saying, “Let’s do this.”

I stood at the cavern’s entrance with both Adrianne and Kine while we watched Adrian run over to the overseer, slashing him. Adrian immediately went into a defensive posture and waited for the 8 miners to get near him. As they neared him, he engaged his Taunting Aura, after which, I slowly stalked towards the first miner that I saw.

As I moved towards it, I saw a soft blue magic mist cover the entire area around Adrian. The miners fell into a mezz, a sort of standing sleep as their weapons dropped to their sides. After the miners were mezzed, a golden glow surrounded Adrian. The illusionist must have cast an area of effect sleep spell, and then the priest used a heal over time, or HoT, spell that constantly healed Adrian for a small amount for a period of duration. Typically HoT spells lasted 3 to 5 seconds, depending on the ability route and level that the priest went with.

I neared the miner that I was stalking towards, performing an Assassinate as I got into range. The goblin came out of his daze, screaming, as it turned towards me, with a green hue of an aura now surrounding it since it was now also poisoned.

I followed up with an Eviscerate as I saw a blue fireball smash into the goblin, killing it. The illusionist must also have some ability in damage spells I thought to myself. Even though the Illusionist’s damage spells were typically weak, since the class was designed for crowd control, they did have them.

I moved towards the next goblin, performing an Eviscerate and Garrote in quick succession, breaking the goblin’s daze. Again, I saw the blue fireball hit the goblin that I was attacking, and from the corner of my eye. I saw a golden shield made of magic appear in front of Adrian, while I saw that I had the soft golden glow surrounding me.

“This is going to hurt,” I thought to myself as I got into a low, semi-crouched position.

Since I didn’t use my Assassinate ability, the goblin was not quite dead and was able to return my attack. Raising my arm above my head, I blocked the attack with my forearm, missing the parry so that I could perform my Riposte ability. I felt the jagged teeth of the dull blade enter my arm, finally stopping as it hit my bone.

Grinding my teeth, the only thing I could think of was how much it hurt. However, my vision didn’t fade into red, and instead, I grew furious. This trash actually hit me, the rage starting to grow inside of me. With the goblin’s sword still stuck in my arm, I twisted my arm so that my forearm was facing upwards, the sword now below my arm.

I stepped around the goblin and took it’s forehead into my left hand, angling its face upwards as I ripped my arm from it’s sword, bringing the dagger to it’s neck as I whispered through gritting teeth, “Assassinate.” A notification appeared in my view which I didn’t pay attention to, blind with both rage, and pain.

Shortly after we dispatched the other 6 miners, I was covered with sweat and blood. Some of it was mine, however most of the blood was the blood of the goblins. I stepped back, out of breathe while I calmed down and looked at Adrian and the overseer, who was still feebly attacking the dark knight.

Even though Adrian was blocking it’s attacks, he was looking at me with a stunned look in his eyes. Ripping his eyes away from mine, he looked back to the overseer.

“Get some stamina, stealth up, and let’s kill this thing so we can finish the quest,” he said, blocking yet another attack from the overseer.

I stepped backwards, the pain now gone. After a few seconds, I felt a little better now that I was not out of breath. The spells surrounding Adrian rotated back and forth from the golden glow that surrounded him to the magical shield in front of him.

Figuring that the healer must be running a bit low on mana by now, I stepped forwards, instantly becoming an invisible shade, stealthed. Creeping to the back of the overseer, Adrian yelled at it, taunting it as he got into a more offensive position and attacked the overseer with his sword. After his attack, I crept behind the overseer and performed Assassinate following it up with both Eviscerate and then Garrote. The overseer was now bleeding, poisoned, and it was silenced just in case it had the ability to call for more help.

It enraged, attacking furiously at Adrian, while I swiftly slashed at the goblin, again and again while I was waiting for the effect auras to dissipate. My vision tinted red as if I was enraged, and after each normal attack, I followed up with Eviscerate in order to keep my damage constantly high. After another 30 seconds or so, the overseer finally gave out it’s last scream as it fell to the floor, dead.

“Well, that was fun,” Adrian said to me in a dead pan voice as I sat on the ground, feeling tired and worn out.

Adrian re-sheathed his sword and put away his shield and started tapping his finger against his leg. The others ran to us shouting.

“Holy shit!”

“Raven! What was that!”

I looked over at them, wondering what they were talking about as Adrian still just stood there, looking down at me.

“Open your ability list and look at Assassinate. What does it say,” he asked me.

Doing as I was told for once, wondering just what the hell was going on, I looked at my Assassinate ability, which was now labeled, “Advanced Assassinate”.

“What the hell is this? Assassinate was able to be evolved?” I thought to myself.

Looking at the description for the advanced ability, I read it out loud so that everyone could hear what the description now said:

Advanced Assassinate: Causes 250% weapon damage. In it's advanced form, assassinate can now be used out of stealth with a 15 second cool down.

“Congrats!” Adrianne shouted as Adrian stood there with a blank face, nothing giving away of what he was thinking.

He had a level 30 assassin though, and since even I didn’t know that the skill could evolve, I could take a guess as to what he was thinking of. He probably wanted to know how the skill evolved, which I wasn’t too sure of myself. All I really remembered about the fight was the pain and the rage that overwhelmed me.

“What happened anyways? I sort of lost myself there,” I meekly asked everyone.

Adrian’s face lit up and he grinned as he laughed.

“You really don’t remember?” he asked.

Shaking my head no, he calmed down a bit and began his story.

“Well, if I didn’t know any better, just by the way you were attacking, I would have said that you were a berserker. Somehow, you where able to parry an attack from one of the goblins with your arm, and then you performed the Assassinate skill. I wonder if you forced the ability to evolve? I’ll have to give it a try at some point,” he said as he started looking at something in the distance.

Shaking his head and looked at us again he finished his thought, “Anyways, let’s loot up and move on.”

The overseer ended up dropping a Leather Tunic that went to Kine since it wasn’t an upgrade for me, however, it also dropped an Overseer’s Short Sword, which went to Adrian, even though I had a suspicion that it wasn’t an upgrade for him since he was using all player-made equipment. It wouldn’t kill me though since I couldn’t use it, so I kept my mouth shut about it. After we looted the goblins, we each grabbed the iron ore from the cart, allowing us to finish the quest from Moire.

Now, we had a choice, to either leave the mine and finish the quest, or keep going and kill the boss mob that was surely deeper within the mine. Since I was getting excited to use my new form of Assassinate, I voted on continuing on, even though I was content with returning if the others wanted to and it would allow me to get some decent weapons for the level range. Although, there was a chance that we might come across some decent loot from the boss’s treasure chest.

Needless to say, everyone decided that we would continue on to the end, so we began our journey, deeper into the mine. We formed up as we had before, with Adrian in the lead, myself behind him, and the healer and illusionist behind me. Adrian decided that we should head through the left tunnel to see where that one would go and we slowly started walking, our eyes keeping an eye out for any enemies that we would come across.

Shortly after entering the left path, we saw a goblin patrol walking away from us. From what I could tell, all three goblins were wearing tattered leather tunics and tattered pants. However, the patrol leader was holding a sword, and the other two were using wooden clubs.

Adrian rushed the group as I went into stealth, the temporary shield buff glowing in front of him. He taunted the three goblins as I got into position. Even though I didn’t need to be stealthed for my Assassinate anymore, I still felt that I should, since critical hits were more likely when attacking from stealth.

This time though, instead of attacking the goblins with the clubs, I decided to attack the one with the sword. Only in bigger fights, like the one with the overseer, was it wise to get rid of the trash monsters first, since it would help the healer to keep the tank alive. In small fights like these, simple heals that worked over a period of time were sufficient, and the healer wouldn’t need to waste mana with their larger heals.

Easily killing the patrol, we continued on walking through the mine’s curves and bends. Deeper into the mine, a foul, dark yellow fog started to form. We ran into 3 more patrols before we reached another cavern which gave us all an additional level. This one much larger than the one with the overseer. However, unlike the cavern with the overseer, this one was dark and silent, no sounds coming from within. It was, eerie, to say the least.

“I don’t like it,” Adrian said, stopping before he got into the cavern. “Since we all got a level on the way down, let’s spend our points before we go in. From the guide, we should be facing a hobgoblin of some sort that runs this place.”

After allocating my stat points like I planned out, I opened up my skill list and upgrading Advanced Assassinate to level 5, Apply Poisons to level 2, and Stealth to level 3. I gave Adrian a slight nod, letting him know that I was ready. Once everyone was finished, we entered the cavern.

Almost immediately entering the cavern, we spread out, with Adrian in front of us. Flames starting to appear in the sconces that were mounted on the walls one at a time, until the cavern was entirely lit from the soft light from the flames.

I heard Adrianne gasp, as we all saw the body of the large hobgoblin. It was already dead from a huge, gaping slash, slicing its upper torso in half from a diagonal blow. This was definitely not normal, and I immediately went into stealth and looked around.

“What in the hell?” Kine said, looking around as well.

Adrian went over to the dead hobgoblin still maintaining a soft white glow around it. It hadn’t been looted.

“Whatever this is, it looks like whatever killed the boss didn’t loot it. Maybe the mine is bugged and we’re sharing an instance with someone?” he said, just as confused as the rest of us.

Adrianne saw the treasure chest first, still unopened. “Honey, did you find a key from the hob?” she asked as she walked towards the chest.

“Yea, whatever killed it didn’t take the loot. We got 5 silver and the key to the chest.” he responded.

I should have known they were married, or at least involved, with their names almost being exactly alike. We all walked over to the treasure chest that would have the loot from the boss in it. Adrian unlocked the chest and we looked inside.

Our eyes lit up with the amount of loot inside of the chest. There was 16 pieces of hobgoblin cloth, which was enough for us to each have 4 each, a ring, and to top it off, a skill book.

“First things first, let’s take a look at the ring,” Adrian said to everyone as he pulled it out and holding it out in front of him, letting us see what it looked like.

It seemed like it was made from iron, or another type of dull metal, with slashes appearing on the outside of it. Analyzing it, I looked at the stats for it:

Ring of the Hobgoblin

Rarity: Common

Level: 10

Weight: .1

Durability: 100/100

———————————————————————————

Effects

Strength: +10

———————————————————————————

Bonus Effect: Gives the owner 10% additional physical damage.

Since we were using the “need before greed” dungeon loot rules, both Adrian and I said out loud, almost at the same time, “Roll dice.”

The system announced our rolls so that everyone around us could hear, “Raven wins the dice roll with a 52. Adrian rolled 43. Congratulations Raven!”

I grinned as I snatched the ring from Adrian who looked as if I stepped on his virtual dog. Thinking that it sucked to be him, I equipped the ring, feeling as if I grew a bit in power. It could have been just me though.

Adrian then pulled out the skill book so that we could look at the cover of the skill book and read the title.

Shadow Step

Rarity: Rare

Cost: 100 Mana

Weight: .5

Description: Allows the player to immediately stealth and teleport to a target within 5 meters. Each level increase range which Shadow Step can be used by 10%.

I looked around myself to see that the three others were all looking at me, their mouths gaping open. Each trying, and failing, to say something. I was stunned myself that this skill dropped. It took me over six months of searching for this one skill before I got lucky when I was playing Shadowblood.

When used correctly, this skill was one of the skills that everyone, including some assassins, thought was overpowered since the assassin could literally attack, vanish, attack, and vanish as long as they had the mana to continue to do so. In fact, this was one of the skills that I had used during the tournament after I first stunned the healers.

“I call dibs,” I said to the others as I grinned like a Cheshire cat.

Adrian reluctantly gave me the skill book which went into my inventory since rare and unique skills could only be learned from a trainer once you had the skill book.

We walked towards the door that in the back of the cavern since it would lead back to the entrance when suddenly the entire room was surrounded by black and red flames. The others looked around, clear that they didn’t know what was happening. However, I had seen these types of flames before. They were called the Flames of Entrapment. The flames would not allow anyone in, or out of, the circle. Nor could spells be used through the flames from players outside of the flaming circle, which included resurrection spells. There was only one class of monster that I knew of had this spell. The Harbingers.

Harbingers were added eight months ago and were meant to be for extremely high level raid groups that had an average level of 120. The odd thing about these harbingers was that there was only one that spawned in the world at any one time and they were located within a random, high level dungeon. As of yet, no one was able to kill one due to the crappy mechanics that each of them had.

The harbinger slowly started to materialize in front of us as he lowered himself to the ground, slightly kneeling and then standing to his full height which was a towering 5 meters tall. It’s skin was gray and muscular, black and red tattoos covering his bare, upper body showing just how muscular it truly was. It’s black, armored pants were made from Infernal Plate with spikes that looked to be made from bones, lining the sides. It would look like your typical infernal, high-level raid monster if it wasn’t for the harbinger’s face. It had an elongated head, skin covering its eyes with what looked like metal staples closing its eyes shut and black ooze coming from the slits between. It had no nose, his face otherwise smooth, until you saw its teeth, an endless amount of sharp teeth that clearly showed that it was a carnivore, no matter if the meat was dead, or alive.

I knew this Harbinger from one of the raids that I went on, it was the Harbinger of Chaos. It had a devastating area of effect ability that reached the entire area of the flames causing 50% of your total health in damage and stunned everyone in the entire area for 2 minutes. He would cast this stun every 2.5 minutes, which meant that the entire raid only had 30 seconds between casts to get everyone healed and to damage him. However, the really shitty mechanic he had was that his normal attack, which occurred every 5 seconds, had an effect that caused instant death. It was quite an impossible raid, and here he was, in a rank 1 dungeon.

“Well, I think we found what killed the hobgoblin,” I said while laughing, resigned to my fate. I could do nothing more but hope for a quick, painless death.

“I’ll take…” Adrian said, before his life was snuffed out, his body now cut into half from his stomach.

It now stood before the 3 of us that were remaining, his arms behind it’s back holding onto what looked like a Death’s Scythe. The scythe curving over his shoulders as if it was watching us, waiting for us to move. I expected to die next since I was in front of the other two that were behind me to my left and right. However, something was… off. It hadn’t used it’s AoE stun yet, which was typically the first thing it did.

I heard a noise that sounded like a sword cutting into the air. The attack was too fast to see. I heard both Kine and Adrianne scream from behind me, then nothing but silence. However, to my eyes, the harbinger never moved. I knew what happened without needing to look behind me, still wondering what was going on and why he would be here of all places.

“Harbinger of Chaos… Chaos… Noctis is the Goddess of Shadows which is aligned with Chaos. It can’t be possible, can it? Think! When I was part of that raid, did anyone look at what faction their deity was from? I know mine was apart of the Holy faction,” I rapidly thought to myself, the feeling I had was growing stronger.

Unable to resist this feeling any longer, I dropped to my knee and placed left hand on my left leg. Immediately after, I bowed my head.

“Harbinger.” I said, interested in what would happen next, even if my own death was near.

The harbinger walked towards me, it’s arms still holding the scythe behind him. It took its steps slowly, coming closer and closer. I could feel myself sweating from both terror and, glee? This couldn’t be right. But it came still until stopping in front of me. With my head bowed, I could see it’s boots, made from the same Infernal Plate, metal spikes covering them.

A voice, which could be described as both being angelic and demonic, grating but smooth, seemingly melding the two natures which formed chaos, started speaking, it’s words broken.

“Mmm… what have… we here… none before… worshiper of chaos… this child… Noctis desired… yes… rise child.”

By now, my thoughts were wild, not knowing what the hell was going to happen. Normally, I was always so calm, so why now? Was it because of what is going on? Now that I am literally living inside this game, was the presence of the harbinger doing something to me? My thoughts were… chaotic. However, I rose, barely realizing it told, no, demanded of me, my head still bowed before this great being.

Still holding it’s scythe with his left arm behind him, he reached out to me with his other arm, his clawed hand in a fist. With no words, there was a flash of black smoke made of magic that appeared between his fingers.

“Gift… Noctis… yours…” the harbinger said after I rose.

I reached out and placed my hand beneath his, ready to accept his gift as I felt something metal fall into it. A chain fell from the side of my hand. This gift was a necklace of some sort and I grasped onto it, placing my arms behind me, almost mimicking the pose that the harbinger had when it appeared. I looked up at him with both terror and admiration in my eyes.

“Thank you Harbinger,” I said as I looked into his eyes that were stapled shut.

The harbinger sighed as if he was content, having one last word for me before he left.

“Die,” he told me, the world growing black once again.