The Silver crown guild had finished mapping the first floor and were now gathered at the entrance to the death corridor. 68 people were split into to groups and were standing on both sides of the entrance. The high ceilings and flaming torches reflected of marble stained with old blood. Giving the whole corridor a forbidding atmosphere. The other remaining parties had found similar barracks to the one Dune and his squad had found, they were filled with the same armour and weapons. The undead knights had taken a toll on the raid force, and Dune had been told that this 68 people were the only ones he was getting. The others outside had either gone after the storm, or gotten bored and started to hunt in the fields surrounding the city. Dune wasn’t to upset about that, it was about what he was expecting to happen but he had hoped he would have more to work with when he got to the corridor. He peaked his head around the side of the doorway and tried to spot the enemies that would soon be attacking. It looked just like a wide empty corridor. A bit like a cathedral, but instead of an alter at the top of the steps on the other side there were two huge doors. Dune could see the bodies of the last group of scouts to come down here. Twisted remains with arrows sticking out of them and pools of dried blood around. Although there was dried blood all over the floor covering the patterned marble.
“Whats the plan then Boss?” Ullen asked snapping Dune back to the moment.
Dune chewed his lip and scanned the corridor again, “we need to know where the mobs spawn, that way we have a better idea of where they will be attacking us from when we are trying to get up there.”
Ullen agreed, “That’s true but I doubt you’ll find anyone willing to waltz up there.”
Dune turned back to his group, Ullen was standing tall with his hands on his shoulders, his helmet was of and his long silky white hair when to his shoulders, framing his slightly pointed but still unrealistically handsome face. Hans was leaned against a wall throwing a dagger into the air and catching it by the blade, he had short dark hair and roughish features, while still maintaining perfect skin and bone structure. Hans spoke up, “didn’t the scouts say they shot arrows down the corridor and into it from above.”
“They did.” Dune said,
“How’d they get up there?”
“The devs probably just made them spawn up there,” Ullen said, “I guess we could get people to climb up but they’d need cover and I doubt crossbows have the power to cause those knights any worry, Bows definitely don’t. Shame all the range weapons are mostly useless.
Dune chewed his lip, “I think Hans is onto something,”
“That would be a first,” Ullen said. Hans gave him the finger,
“It doesn’t feel like the kind of game were the devs would just, spawn enemies in places so they’d be hard to kill. So far there hasn’t been a place in this game that we haven’t been able to get to somehow.” Dune continued. He took another peek around the corner and then walked back along the wall they were standing by. A few of the other guild members looked up expecting him to have something for them to do, but he didn’t speak instead he pressed his ear to the wall and began knocking on it with his fist. The others all watched him bemused, till he turned on them, “well come ne,” he said, “one of these walls has to be hollow,”
The guild members all hurried to the wall pressing their ears against it and knocking. Ullen was next to Dune, “is it?” He asked,
“No idea,” whispered Dune, “I’m making a gamble but leadership is mostly confidence.” Ullen chuckled quietly.
“Over here!” someone further along shouted, Dune ran up to him and pressed his ear against the wall knocking, it was thinner than the other walls and hollow on the other side.
“How do we open it? Should we knock it down?” the player that found the wall asked in excitement.
Dune shook his head and took a step back from the wall and scanned it, “someone give me some light,” he said.
Somebody rushed over and handed him a torch, Dune knelt on the floor and starting at the bottom examined every part of the wall until he saw a brick with a small crack in it. He pushed the cracked brick and it slid slowly into the wall. A clunk echoed in the small space and the other players all murmured and readied their weapons. The wall opened in wards revealing a spiral stair case. “Hans,” Dune said
“On it,” Hans moved silently up the stairs, and was gone for a few minuets. Before coming back down, grinning, “it’s goes to the balcony overlooking the death corridor, there are a bunch of those undead knights with massive bows all sitting in chairs waiting for something to happen.”
Dune grinned, “this is perfect,” he said, “we shouldn’t have any problems dealing with this corridor now, come on.”
He started to walk up the stairs, “you lot wait here, we will be back,” the other players grumbled but sat down.
“You’ll have to give them something to do soon,” Ullen said, as he followed Dun up the stairs with Hans behind him.
“They’ll be plenty to do soon,” Dune said
At the top of the spiral staircase Dune could see a row of undead knights all sitting back in chairs great bows across their knees, Dune crept up onto the landing to let the other two up, the knights didn’t seem to notice them.
“Alright,” said Dune, “with me,” he charged forward, sword pointed at the neck of the undead knight, it turned to slowly and the sword slid through the gap between the helmet and chest piece and tore through the bone there. The knight fell to the ground. Dune yanked the sword free as Hans leaped over him rolled and swung with his daggers at the knee joints of the next knight which was now stood up and lifting it’s great bow. It fell to it’s knees and Dune prepared to charge at it and finish it off when Ullen Yelled, “Down!” shoving him to the ground just as a huge arrow crashed into the wall next to him, It was quickly followed by two more massive arrows, “their firing from the other balcony! Get back.” Ullen shoved Dune again, this time back towards the stairs.
Hans Spun around and started to run back to them arrows smashed into the wall behind him, then one hit him from behind, tearing a huge messy whole through his chest. He collapsed and didn’t move, “Damn it” Ullen cried, as he rose his shield to to try and stop the arrows that were now flying at them from two directions as the monsters further along the balcony started to fire at them. Great arrows crashed into Ullen Tower Shield as the two backpedaled towards the staircase. One of the arrows grazed Dune shoulder taking a small chunk of his hp, and severely damaging the armour there, “fuck,” he yelled.
The two finally made it to the stairs and almost rolled half way down before they stopped themselves, ready to fight any pursuers. The knights didn’t follow them however.
“Damn,” said Ullen, “I liked Hans,”
Dune nodded, “me too,” they sat in silence for a moment thinking of their now dead friend. Dune wondered what it was like when you died in this game, he knew you respawned on a different shard, and were allowed to keep half of your highest stat, but outside of that he had no idea.
“Alright,” said Dune as an idea came to him, “new plan.”
He laid the plan out to the 31 other people on his side of the corridor and then sent someone across to tell the others, it was a tense few moments as that person sprinted across the open space that led into the death corridor but no arrows flew down it. The 67 players split into 4 groups. Two of the groups hastily formed something resembling a roman turtle formation and slowly stepped out into the corridor. These two groups contained most of the tanks in the raid team and they slowly marched up the corridor. Dune had equipped a shield as was leading one of the turtle formations himself Ullen was next to him, grim faced but ready. Another few paces and they were about a quarter of the way down the corridor. There was a loud twang and a wooshing sound. Then something smashed against Dunes shield he winced and the force almost knocked him over, but the person behind him put one of their hands on his back and helped to hold him up. He nodded and the formation took another step forward. More arrows could be heard, one after the other being fired and slamming into the formations, a few more paces and arrows were crashing into them from above forcing many of the shield bearers to there knees. Dune called a halt and saw through the gaps in the shield that he other formation had done so as well. The two formations waited under the barrage of great arrows for tense moments. The mismatched shields had made forming the turtle formation difficult, the people with larger tower Shields were in front or forming the roof, but there weren’t enough leaving many gaps towards the back of the formation were smaller Shields had to be used. Great arrows slipped through these gaps crashing into the ground or in some cases the legs of people pinning them were they stood. The formation had no choice but to leave these people behind, and the others did there best to fill the gaps created.
There was crashing and shouting above them, and the arrows coming from the roof slowed and then stopped as the other two groups charged up the balconies to attack the undead archers up there. Dune shouted and the formation took another step forward. It was slow going and the arrows in front of them never stopped. They crashed into the shields over and over, the people behind the front row were practically holding up the shield bearers in front.
Finally they reached a point close enough to the archers, the arrows from above had stopped and if all had gone to plan the two other teams coinciding mostly of rouges and a few tanks were waiting at the entrance of the death corridor for the arrows to stop.
Dune looked at Ullen who nodded, then he sucked in a great breath and shouted, instantly the two formations broke apart and the warriors charged forward at the archers in front of them. Despite them being to close to use the bows, the undead still swung them around like huge curved staffs, spinning them and crashing them into the heads and bodies of the players trying to attack them. Dune and Ullen charged forward, Dune abandoned his shield and took a two handed grip on his sword. The archer turned to them and swung the bow in a wide arc, Ullen charged forward at the last second and blocked the blow with his shield. Dune went into a slide and swung his sword two handed at the undeads legs, the swing was wild but the sheer momentum behind it caused the undead to fall forward. Then Ullen attacked with a overhead swing that crashed into creatures head and split it in two sending shards of bone out into the air. Dune stood up and scanned the battle field, the fighting was going well. Aside from having a lot of reach it didn’t look like the great bows did a lot of damage. He watched a player get taken down by one but quickly stand back up and charge back into combat. Behind him in the main body of the corridor the most of the other two groups were charging up to join the fray or helping those pinned down by great arrows.
“That wasn’t so bad.” Ullen said, “shame about Rano and Hans though.”
Dune nodded, “yeah thats annoying they were good. Been with us since the start.”
As the other guild members finished of the undead, Dune made his way up the stairs towards the door. It was huge and now he was close enough could see it was made entirely out of a dull white metal. He put his hand on it and tried to push it open, a prompt appeared in his vision and from the exclamations behind him he guess in everyone Else's as well, ‘congratulations, you’ve completed the first floor of the silver citadel. To advance further you must read the inscription on the door.’ Dune glanced up at the door and saw that there was something written there in a language he didn’t recognise, he went back to the prompt, ‘enemies killed 83/100, secrets found 2/8’ it went on listing other stats like steps taken, total damage dealt and received. He scanned the rest of the stats before looking back at the secrets one.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Those two secrets must have been the doors to the balconies,” he said to Ullen who had walked up next to him
He nodded, “I can’t believe we dealt over 7000 damage in total, what does that number mean? None of my abilities have any numbers on them about how much damage they do.”
“Yeah, it plays its cards close to its chest this game.”
“What does the inscription say?”
“No idea,” they both looked up at the alien writing on the wall.
“Perfect” Ullen said
“I think we all deserve a break anyway. Maybe we can hunt down the last of those secrets.”
Ullen agreed and they walked down the steps together, other players were walking up and looking at the doors, but it didn’t look like any of them could read it either. Slowly the raid party walked back towards the entrance of the dungeon, everyone looking out for secrets.
“I wonder how Flux is getting on” Dune said,
“I don’t know who that is” Ullen replied.
A short while later they emerged back into the plaza that led up to the citadel. It was deserted of people, and eerily quiet. Pools of rainwater had appeared in small craters left by Goodmans escape, the fountain at the center of the plaza was nearly overflowing. The late morning sun hung in the sky and cast a bright light though the spattering of dark clouds still left by the storm. It smelled like it always did after a heavy storm. Dune glanced around the sodden plaza, the houses been damaged were either knocked over, sodden wet, or both. He wasn’t sure if it would make it easier or harder to repair the city, but at least any remaining fires would have been put out.
The other players started to walk past him. He let them go and watched as they split up into the different streets. Some of them heading towards the city gates to hunt in the field, others towards the barracks or the market to rest up, or sell and buy. The plaza gradually filled with chatter as the raid group continued to walk out of the citadel. Ullen stopped next to Dune and folded his arms watching the players as well.
“We’ll need to find some replacements for the squad.” He broke the silence between them, “it’s shame about Rano and Hans.”
“I wonder where they respawned,”
Ullen only shrugged, then he sighed, “I’m going to hit the market, see if any of the crafters have come up with something interesting yet. Dune nodded, “oh,” Ullen said, “you should take this too.” He handed Dune Ranos potions in the split bandoleir, “I don’t want to accidentally drink that fountain water,” Dune took the bandoleir and stuck it in his pack. He’d stick it in his bank, and figure out a way to tell the health pots from the water later, maybe get another alchemist. Ullen started walking away but he turned, “let me know if you have any ideas for the squad before you invite them, I’d like to meet them first.”
Dune nodded again, Ullen turned and joined a group of players heading towards the market.
He pulled up his contacts and wrote a short message to Flux asking where she was. He got a reply almost instantly, ‘outside the archive,’ it said, ‘practicing, come and see.’ The citadel was in the middle of the city. The archive was a deeper in, just of the side of main street. He sighed, stretched his arms and set off.
The city hadn’t been repaired that much since the fire, but main street was where the efforts were focused and the repairs were coming along nicely. Only a few buildings were still covered in scaffolds, they mostly had npc builders climbing on them but a few players were up their too. The players were a lot rowdier than the npcs, and spend their breaks leaning over the scaffolds and yelling down to the people in the street to toss food up to them, or jumping from building to building. Dune watched as he walked down main street. Most of the raid group had gotten here before him and were boasting about their exploits in the citadel over street food. Or shouting at traders to try and get a better deal. He walked without stopping splashing though puddles as he went. Now he was on main street he could see the top of the infinity gate, at the other end surrounded by the high wall, which was still crawling with npc guardsmen. Dune had taken the players of guard duty when he finished the quest city guard quests and was put in charge. Other people had finished the quest since, and when he died one of them would be picked based on their performance both on the quest and since. Dune was a little paranoid that one of them might try to assassinate him but as of yet no one had. Likely they had all been to busy to think about it. He would have to keep them that way.
The archive was down a side street normally the street wouldn’t have been narrow but a house had collapsed and the debris blocked three quarters of it. Dune turned into the street and found it jammed up with players trying to get through now the gap. There must have been about 20, people there all pushing and shoving and shouting to let them through. And more where coming in behind Dune to see what all the fuss was about. Dune grabbed one of the players at the back of the crowd and asked him what was going on,
“Wizards isn’t it, they got their magic and are doing all sorts of stuff, over there.” Dune let the player go and he went back to shoving at the back of the crowd, he tried to look over the heads of the players, and could just about see flashes of light against against the wall of the building further down the street. He pulled up his contacts and typed another message to Flux,
‘what’s going on?’
‘Come and see,’
‘Can’t get past the crowds.’
He waited for a reply but none came. All the players at the front of the crowd started to scream, and shove backwards, Dune looked up and took a few steps back to get out of the way. The weight of the crowd didn’t let those at the front get far back, but their sheer panic spread far enough that they got a couple of feet between them and the chunk of debris, right before it exploded in purple and green light. Stunned silence, followed by cheers and affirmations that everyone was okay. The crown rushed forward into the now clear but more ruined street, the houses on either side taking a heavy impact when the boulder exploded. The crowd charged through the dust cloud and into the archive plaza. Dune followed behind them with some of the other more cautious players.
The plaza in front of the archive still had the craters from Goodmans escape. But now there seemed to be a lot more. There were about 80 people standing in the middle in the plaza in pairs or threes, they were summoning and tossing bolts of light into the air or at each other. The bolts of light flew and when they hit or reached a certain distance they exploded like water balloons, sending out a great splash of colour and light. The people that got hit by them stood stock still with a shocked look on their faces, after a few seconds they jerked suddenly and could move again, they would fall to their knees in a fit of laughter and then get up and summon their own light to throw at whoever had hit them. Dune walked slowly into the plaza and scanned the crowd for Flux, she was standing a short distance away surrounded by a crowd of players who were all asking her questions, “how do you do it?”
“Can you teach me that?”
“What does it feel like?”
She was grinning at them and holding out her hands which were glowing faintly, the players around her OOed and AAhhed when she saw Dune approaching she shooed the crowd away, her hands leaving trails of multicoloured light.
“You all got magic then?” Dune said
Flux held her hands up and summoned a small ball of light there then she waved it away and the ball disintegrated into multicoloured glowing dust and blew away in the breeze where it disappeared completely.
Dune watched it go, “so what does it do?” he said, “can you toss rocks about like Goodmans wizard?”
Flux shook her head, “I don’t think so, from what we have gathered magic is split into categories, we have light magic, I think that guy must have had earth.”
“What can light magic do?”
“At the minute, not much we have one spell that we can channel our mana into, if we don’t put much mana in then it stuns, you can see that lot doing it over there,” she gestured to the crowd of wizards tossing balls of light about, “if you channel more mana into it, then it does damage, depending on how much you put in,” she pointed at the rock, “that took 3 of us our entire mana pool to blow up, and now my hands are doing this,” she waved them about leaving trails of multicoloured light.
“Is there a status effect for that?”
Flux shook her head.
“Well if 3 of you can blow up that stone, and one of you can stun, then we should be in much better shape when we figure out how to get to the next floor of the citadel. It will make fighting those the monsters in there a lot easier,”
“Did you find anything good?”
“A lot of armour and weapons, that we can’t sell and the stats needed for the armour are quite high.”
“No gold?” Flux started to walk back into the square and she gestured for Dune to follow her.
They walked back towards the archive together, “no, but we didn’t realise there were secret doors till right at the end.”
“You didn’t think there would be secret doors in a dungeon?” she raised an eyebrow which like her hair was bright pink.
Dune pressed his lips together, partially out of annoyance and partially to hide a smile, “next time we’ll have you and your wizards to help us look. Maybe your magic can spot hidden doors and secret passages?”
“My wizards?,” she said, “I bet there is something on the skill tree that we just haven’t noticed yet.”
Dune nodded, they now stood in the middle of the plaza by the ruined fountain, around them flashes of light and yells, “makes sense, and yeah, your the only officer in the guild with magic, which puts you in charge of them,” Flux smiled as he spoke, “you’ll have to stay ahead of them though, and you’ll need to rank up your other skills too, you’ll have to work your way into the top 1% of players here,”
“Like your squad, and Goodmans gang?” She asked
“Yeah, speaking of which my squad finds itself suddenly short on members, I’d like you to meet Ullen, and if that goes well you can join us and we’ll get you skilled up.”
Flux looked away from him for a moment, up until now she had done what she wanted in the game, joining the Silver Corwns, was something she had wanted to do, going out and saving that squad was what she had wanted to do. But now here she was an officer and the guild leader was pushing responsibilities on her and telling her she should join his squad.
“Well?” Dune asked,
Whats the worst that could happen, I can always just leave it it gets to much, “alright,” she said, “but I’m going to train the wizards how I think they should be trained.”
Dune grinned, “good, he said, I was hoping you would, I don’t know anything about magic.” He pulled up his contacts and told Ullen to meet them both back at HQ
“Come on, I’ll introduce you to Ullen, he’s the tank. Once you’ve met him we can go after Goodman.”
Together they walked out of the archive plaza and back to main street, they turned north towards the infinity gate and primary guard barracks in the city, which was also serving as the Silver Crowns guild hall, it was one of the few buildings in the city large enough, and they still had, had to convert several of the surrounding houses into extra space. The wall was still abuzz with npc guards which snapped to attention as Dune walked by, their eyes going from vacant and glassy to alert in an instant. As Dune and flux made their way up to his office, Dune wondered how the npcs would hold up during a big battle.