John and the others walked out of the Tavern, the barkeep respawned, that was a slight relief, though they didn't remember what happened, he did yell at us when he found blood on the bar counter though, apparently he thought we did that, it wasn't pleasant and they were officially kicked out of the bar.
John heard something across the stree, he turned and saw Merlin and some of his cronies were laughing at them.
Leo growled. "Oh fuck no, dinner time is sacred." He said through gritted teeth.
"Come on, let's just find another inn, maybe we can rent some rooms for the night." Rin said, leaning on John, apparently still drunk.
"Alright, let's go." Leo grumbled.
They started deeper into the city until they came across a large inn called the stumbling swordsman, the inside was nice, alot nicer than the last tavern, it was probably really expensive too.
John looked at Leo. "Is this place even in our budget?" He asked.
"Fuck no, that's where we're staying." Leo said chuckling, pointed at a tavern next door that looked to be a hares breath from falling down.
"Christ, anyone know where to buy pesticides here? That place looked more like it's made of termites." One of the soldiers said.
John sighed as they walked into the musty bar, glasses with glass that was brown with what could only be mud, like he picked them up out of the muddy gutters.
Tyrese leaned over to John and Rin. "I think I'm gonna take your advise about the lead poisoning here." He muttered to them.
Many men in cloaks made of what could only be described as burlap sacks woven together with twine. Leo whispered. "This is a good spawn point for Bandit NPC's, but don't fight them unless they attack you first..." He muttered to them.
John saw one reach for Leo's coin purse, but Leo swatted their hand away. "I've stayed here many times durring the beta, first day I lost my coin purse, and then-" He hopped over someone's leg that they threw into his path. "I was tripped, and finally..." He ducked under a flying piece of moldy bread. "It almost happens like clockwork when a player comes into the bar."
They moved through the tavern, receiving glares and in Rin's case a cat whistle or two, John wished he could kick their teeth in but he had a feeling that's what they wanted. While Leo negotiated a with the barkeep the three of them started sort of hugged the wall with Tyrese and his large shield standing between them and the bandits.
They waited a while until Leo came over to them and gestured for the stairs. they followed and came to rooms that would make a rat turn it's nose up at it, John could even see cockroaches desperately fleeing from the room once they opened the door, that didn't bode well.
John guided Rin to the bed and she apparently was very tired because she was asleep as soon as she hit the bed, and frankly, john couldn't blame her, he felt exhausted, he laid down on the hay covered bed next to Rin and went to sleep.
He had a weird dream, the kind that you'd swear held some great importance but couldn't remember once he woke up. He laid on his bed looking at Rin who was still asleep. He could almost think just for a moment that yesterday was a horrible terrible dream, and then a cockroach crawled out of her hair and he sighed in disappointment, and grabbed the squirming insect and crushed it, it gave out a high squeel when it died and exploded into red pixels. [+1 xp gained.]
John got an idea, he hadn't looked at his skilled in a while, but maybe he could get a shit ton of xp if he put poison in some food and killed as many roaches as he could, he wasn't sure if it'd work, but John thought it was worth a try, "John! best exterminator in the city, they'll call me." He muttered, honestly with how things were he might actually need to get a job, this wasn't a game anymore, not to them, despite how it disguises itself, they were trapped here and they'd better start to adapt as humans do.
John typed a message to Leo asking him to meet him in the market near the town square before waking Rin up. "Rin, it's time to wake up." He whispered while rubbing her arm. She slowly blinked awake and looked at him.
"What is it?" She asked, before looking around and groaning. "It wasn't a dream." She scratched her head and a roach fell out and skittered away, she let out a shrill scream that woke the entire neighborhood.
Far away in the woods a flock of birds were probably taking flight. John thought, as he brushed a roach off of his shoulder. "I'm going to the market to buy some poison, would you care to come?" He asked.
"Whatever gets me out of here." She said, shivering.
John nodded and opened the door only to see several angry looking men glaring at them. "Tell your whore to keep it down in there! we're tryin to- oooooooh..."
John didn't hesitate, his foot slammed him in the balls for everything his 5 points of strength was worth. [Critical hit, status effects added, stunned + agony.] The system informed him helpfully as the man fell to his knees and groaned in the fetal position.
The other guys immediately drew swords, and John just now realized he left his dagger next to the bed. He leapt back as the bandits swarmed into the room funnily enough many trampling over the downed bandit. He snatched up the dagger and quickly unsheathed it, he cut at one of the bandits across the stomach, he quickly opened his menu and quickly typed a message as he dodged attacks. "Leo I'm in dire need of help right now, banditos, my room, help!" He pressed enter.
Leo dodged a sword and slashed under the man's armpit, before dodging back. and into a wall, one slammed their sword into the wall but John ducked just in time to prevent his head getting pinned to the wall. He slammed the dagger into their chest and they fell down, He decided to equip the iron dagger into his off hand and threw it at a band it and blocked another strike, well, less blocked and more guided the blade away from himself.
Leo leapt leapt through the door and stepped on the bandit who was on the floor and they hollered as their gonads were crushed again.
Leo twirled and let out a pair of crimson slash, three were slashed in half and exploded into red pixels. "Damn it John I told you not to attack them!"
A flurry of golden mana bolts slammed into four of the bandits as Rin had taken up her tome. "Trust me, they deserved it."
John slammed the pommel of his dagger into the side of one of their heads and they stumbled back, before John slipped through the hole in their ranks. He slashed up at the bandit's throat, the critical hit caused them to fall and explode into red pixels, but there were at least fifteen of them left.
Leo spun swinging his sword across the chest of one man before parrying another sword and stabbing the bandit and spun again sending a crimson slash through their bodies one of their heads off. it was like watching a dancer, he tripped one of them and stabbed another one through their mouth the blade protruded from the back of their throat before kicking him off and turned readying to attack again.
John stabbed one of them in their throat and ripped it out then parried a second attack using his iron dagger, he stabbed them in their chin and straight into their skull.
Someone rushed John from behind but was showered with golden mana bullets that tore him apart, Rin shot a golden mana beam into a few more bandits who disappeared from the onslaught like a spider who just got hit by a jet of water from a hose on full blast.
Leo killed the last few bandits, he slashed them apart and looked at John breathing hard. "Explain."
"They called my wife a not so nice name, so I kicked them in the nuts, and the others took exception to that." John said, then looked over Leo's soldier at a whimpering Bandit who was crawling away. John threw his daggers at the bandit, and two second later they was back in his hands and he exploded into red pixels.
Leo sighed, slamming his sword down on a bandit who he'd tripped earlier. "John, pal, we've gotta have a talk about your temper some time."
John shrugged. "Get someone you love enough, and you'll understand."
Leo snorted and Rin chuckled.
John waved them off. "I have an idea that can get us some xp and loads of coin with it."
Leo raised an eyebrow. "What?"
John in answer stomped on a scurrying roach. "Becoming exterminators."
Leo frowned. "That doesn't sound very effective."
"How many rats do you think are in the average city sewer." John asked.
"Couple million, why?" Leo asked.
"I get one xp from killing a single roach, how much money do you think people would pay us for getting rid of their pests." John asked.
Leo shrugged. "We can give it a try."
They left the bar and walked out to the streets, there was a market down the road. "So you want to buy pesticides?" Leo asked.
John nodded. "Yeah, and some kind of bait, so if we can buy some rat poison and put it into the sewer in a block of meat or something, we might find a noticable and steady increase in xp." John answered.
Leo nodded. "This is to stay between the three of us." He said, staring at both of them.
Rin asked. "What about Tyrese?"
Leo face palmed. "We forgot to get him, I'll shoot him a quick message, he might meet us at the market."
John gave a two fingered salute, they'd kept grinding methods secret before in other games, so this wasn't very new to us. "The four of us can set up separate baits at separate parts of the sewer."
Leo nodded. but held up an empty leather sack. "One problem man, We're out of money."
John groaned. "We can find a hunting shop, we got alot of miscellaneous items that can be sold for money like deer antlers and wolf pelts." John said. "We keep the meat though."
They came to a building with a sign that had an antler on it, they supposed it was as good as anything else they'd seen so they walked inside. inside was an older woman reading a book, she was practically surrounded by pelts and taxidermied animals. "What can I help you with today?" She asked, not even looking up from the book.
John wordlessly took his misc hunting items from his inventory and put them on the counter. She looked at the two foot stack of pelts and shrugged. "Busy little beavers are we? fifty gold."
Leo and Rin put their pelts onto the counter and the old woman shrugged again. "hundred fifty gold, anything else?" She asked.
They set some of antlers and wolf fangs onto the counter. She shook her head looking at the cracked antlers and broken teeth. "Two gold for the batch."
John grumbled under his breath as he took the coins and split it with the others.
They left, and after buying enough poison to kill an entire city from a few alchemist shops they traveled to the sewers, though some city guards did start trailing them, apparently carrying enough poison to murder their entire kingdom was considered suspicious activity. but they stopped when the party went into the sewers, apparently smell came over duty and frankly John didn't blame them.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
John set up chunks of venison and wolf meat while the others went to set up their bait in branching paths, he set his up deeper in before coming to the entrance to wait, Soon enough Tyrese came into the tunnel and John handed him a few vials of poison. "poison some of your venison and don't eat it." He said.
"I don't think I'll ever eat again after smelling this." He said after gagging.
"Regardless, it's poisoned, remember to mark your path with your sword or something, from what Leo said the sewers are a maze."
Tyrese walked deeper into labyrinth of shit and stone, John was already seeing some xp indicators from some of the meat he'd placed deeper inside, he grinned knowing they might have just discovered a risk free way of levelling up.
He saw Leo and Rin walk out of the dark and he waved and they did so back. "We set up our bait, where's Tyrese?"
John gestured deeper inside. "He went in a few minutes ago, we should wait for him."
Leo nodded, and walked out to the lake that the sewer drained out into while John scraped a message into the stone wall, 'We're outside on the lake shore.'
They waited for about twenty minutes before Tyrese came running out like the devil was chasing him. "What the-" Leo cried out when behind Tyrese the biggest swarm of rats he'd ever seen came pouring out of the sewer tunnel after him like a torrent of black hairy water.
[Alert you have entered combat with a raid boss.]
[Raid boss level 50, the black death.]
hp 30000/30000
Goodluck dumbass.
Leo cursed a storm and started running away, everyone followed his lead running the fuck away, they can't fight something that's level 50 much less a raid boss.
They booked it into the city and many of the npcs started running as well, guards saw this and started fighting, they were actually doing pretty good given they were all level 30 but they were still dying like dogs, though each of their swings took 300 hp from it's health bar which they could see at the bottom of their vision, it looked like the rats were going to swallow up the guards, at least until one of them threw a torch at it, then the rats started burning and the swarm retreated away from the burning rats as if they had the plague ironic given their name. John looked at Rin. "You have any fire spells?" He asked.
She nodded, "Yes, I can learn a new spell, just let me try to scroll through to find one..." Rin said, her fingers danced through the air clearly looking through the menu.
John looked at Leo who also nodded his head. "Crimson slash and burning blade, but I need a second to grab the skill from the menu."
Leo's fingers darted through the invisible windows until he finally formed red crystal on his hand and brushed it on the blade which caused it to ignite. he spun around and sent a crimson slash which trailed scarlet flames from the crescent shaped energy slash that raked across the rats like a plow through dirt, it set some of them on fire, but the creature's health bar only lost like 130 hp + 20 hp every second that only lasted for three seconds as the horde seperated from the burning rats again and started attacking some of the people who were in the houses, it was terrifying watching them gnaw through wood, each house they passed had several small tooth marks covering the whole building. Either way the rat horde was still flooding through the streets and over buildings. he wouldn't be surprised if you could see the rat swarm from an airplane 25k feet in the air. John threw a dagger into the swarm and managed to skewer two rats but that didn't even register in the meager 2 damage. this was a fight that he'd be little help in, and frankly they had no business trying to fight it in the first place.
Rin started blasting the shit out of the rats with fire spells as the rats started consuming corpses of fallen guards and people who failed to flee in time, the new blanket of magic napalm caused over 800 damage in total with the damage over time effects not included. The widespread burning made it harder for them to separate from the burning rats, impossible even, many of them died, burning and those that remained was still large, by now it was 3000 damage from it, but that ended with it trying to kill Rin who proceeded to start running again quickly followed by the lot of us. had cost them some ground and a couple rats even took bites out of John's legs, he saw that Tyrese was having the same problem though a little worse because he had heavier gear such as the tower shield and the longsword, so his movement speed wasn't the best, still he manage to keep up relatively well, Leo sent another flaming crimson slash at the rats, as he was running stealing another slice of it's health, apparently they could combine spells, which clearly could be used to devastating effect.
John grabbed a torch a wall and chucked it at the rat horde behind them, which actually contributed something useful from him. He saw that the burning torch impacted into the horde and burned the creatures.
John turned back to where he was running and saw an old man in white and gold armor raising a sword and slashed down, the ocean of rats was cut in half with a massive wind slash it was like being witness to Moses parting the red sea, They only just barely got out of the way of the attack and saw a good twenty thousand damage be removed from the bosses health bar.
John rolled on the ground and got back onto his feet. "Shit, if I didn't know any better I'd say he was aiming that at us."
Leo shouted back. "Because he is, Watch out!" Leo dropped down to his hands and knees
John's eyes widened as a second horozontal slash came at them, John and the others managed to drop to their hand and knees as the wind slash whooshed over their heads, He saw the rest of the rats die and the creatures hp bar went way below zero to the point that the bar flew across the other side of his vision, part of him wondered if that would end in a second boss where they have to fight an army of ghost rats, but the congratulations crushed that idea.
[You beat Black death raid boss. fucking, how?]
[Leaderboard]
[1. Emperor Glasgow.]
[2. Lenda The Enchantress.]
[3. Leonidas Lion heart.]
[4. Guard.]
[5. Specter.]
[6. Guard.]
[7. Guard.]
[8. Guard.]
[9. Guard.]
[10. Guard.]
[Congratulations]
[You managed to get into the top 10 most contribution to the raid boss. you've earned an uncommon wheel of fortune.]
[Congratulations.]
[You managed to be in the top 5 most contribution to the raid boss. your uncommon wheel of fortune has been upgraded to a rare wheel of fortune. You lucky son of a bitch.]
John quickly rolled the wheel and got a rare experience boost torpor.
as the old man walked up to him staring at him with cold blue eyes, wind pluming off the back of his plate armor like gusting angel wings he raised his sword wind gathering around the blade, though Leo attacked the man from the side, a flaming crimson slash exploded against his armor, but the man shrugged it off and smacked Leo across the face and his neck snapped, and they proceeded to stab him in the chest. John Leapt up and swung his knife at the old man's head, he dodged it and the sword slammed into his own chest, his eyes widened as the pain hit him, and his vision darkened.
[You died to Emperor Glasco, level 9000, karma's a bitch]
Half of your levels have been removed. Level 45 -22, you are now level 23, you still managed to benefit, so don't fucking complain or I'll cut your xp gain in half.
Died in safe zone, your items have not been removed, aren't I kind?
John was confused, where the fuck did he get 35 levels from, then he remembered he managed to survive until the rat boss was killed. But Emperor? why the fuck was he there, why did he kill him? Well, atleast he still had his stuff and he gained levels like the menu said, he frankly should be thankful.
After Five minutes of thinking his body finally reformed in the Cathedral apparently only a few seconds after Leo Rin and Tyrese.
Leo looked at his level and cursed. "Fucking hell yeah! we managed to level from that!" He said cheerily.
The others smiled at that.
"I managed to get a new robe, it's uncommon and I think it looks good." John turned to see Rin wearing a beautiful white kimono with a red hakama, it was a shrine maidens outfit.
Leo nodded, though his item seemed to be a large white coat military coat. "it's the commanders dress coat, a very rare item, apparently it's a cloak, seeks weird but the devs know best."
"Yeah, that's why we're dead." Tyrese said, equipping a heavy looking chestplate. "it's apparently an adamantine chestpiece, uncommon."
John looked at Leo. "Back on track, Leo, who the fuck is Emperor Glasco?"
"An NPC that spawns to deal with shit like that, he kills the enemies, and then kills the players that brought the threat to his city. Remember that story about the kobold army, what do you think happened to the player who lead them back to the city." Leo explained, and took some calming breaths. "Why did that thing spawn, Tyrese what happened?"
Tyrese winced, as if he didn't want to remember. "I found a large chamber, there was a man in there, when I came into his detection range he started playing music from a fucking flute and the rats started coming through the sewer grates."
Leo looked at Tyrese in awe. "Hamlin? You saw fucking Hamlin?"
Tyrese looked confused. "Like the fairy tale?"
Leo smiled. "You saw what was essentially an internet legend with the beta testers, people tried to find him but those sewers are a labyrinth and his layer seems to change each day. In truth it became a sort of creepypasta."
John blinked, trying to take his knife out of it's sheath but it was like it was magnetically locked into it's sheath..
[Unable to unsheathe weapons in the cathedral.]
Leo sighed. "Well let's get back to gri-" Leo's eyes looked up at the cieling, "We're level 23?"
John chuckled. "We managed to dodge the second strike and die after the black death died, if we'd lived we'd be over level 40." John said.
Leo sighed. "Let's go see if we can't get some money to buy a guild hall."