Jake. 30th of September.
Monkeys. Barrels full of monkeys. A surfeit of monkeys.
The good news was that all of the fighters had leveled up their anti-leg skills. Each had slightly different variations. Michael’s had a higher bonus against tails, since he had earned the skill against them, while John’s was the more convenient version, the ‘true’ anti-leg skill.
So the room was littered with dozens of legs and tails. Beside them rested the destroyed bodies of the corrupted monkey monsters.
“I am loosing stamina and my character has not moved for the last thirty seconds,” Michael said and then explained, “I think that proves that the corruption is coming out of the monkeys.”
“And we have three more waves coming in,” John said as he tried to do the math.
“I can cleanse some before the next wave, but I can’t do it during the wave or they will focus on me,” Helen said with some concern.
Jade’s character was a humming and their weapons glowed with extra power.
“We are going to have real trouble if we all entirely run out of stamina. The controllers become less responsive the lower stamina is and timing is key for actually injuring things, let alone kill them,” John said.
“Let her wait another round, we should still be above a third of our stamina, and it shouldn’t matter too much before that. Micheal do you have any more bottles of oil? That worked really well last time.”
“I have one left, but I am going to save it for the last wave.”
“Makes sense,” Jake said and went quiet as he wished they had more consumables.
“Here they come,” Helen said as she moved backwards a little bit.
This time there were twenty of them and that meant 160 legs, plus almost as many tails for the title gathering. Jake took a drink before picking up his controller and stepping away from the group. He needed to take a few of the targets out, and he did not want to risk hitting his allies, especially with his attacks.
He engaged the first monkey and cut through its defensive tails with his title, before making a second strike that finished the monster. The next monkey jumped for him, arms, legs and tails spread out like a net as it surged towards his character, but after catching it on his shield it fell off and a successful kick knocked it back and as well as lowering its health points to under half.
“Help!” Helen said and Jake refocused on the battlefield as a whole.
Helen was busily fighting five of the monkeys with a cutlass that they had found in a treasure chest. Since she didn’t want to risk drawing them, it had seemed like a good idea.
“Why are so many focusing on you?” Jake asked as he watched his stamina go down and sighed.
“One of them jumped at me, so I used my off-hand to block and it partially cleansed them and then most of them start focusing on me.”
“Ok,” Jake said as he raced over punted the first corrupted monkey into the far wall. It broke on impact and before it landed he was slicing off tails, arms, legs and heads. Helen tried to help, between occasionally just running away, but at least she didn’t have very good sword abilities and could not use her main ability without drawing much of the rest of the room after them. Things seemed worse as the chattering of the monkey forced down the effects of the buff from Jade’s humming and Jake watched his stamina bar with a nervous eye.
John suddenly was beside his character and with quick hatchet work the remaining monkeys were down before Michael called out, “We need help here, I can’t turn fast enough!”
There were only four monkeys there, but with their flailing limbs and appendages, he was definitely having difficulties.
John ran back and then his character fell over, as his stamina ran out. This helped Michael by virtue of two of the monkeys breaking off to attack the player who was down and Jake had to rush over to protect him. John slowly managed to get his character back to his feet as he struggled with his controller to stand, while Jake tried to conserve his tiny sliver of stamina by taking hits or blocking, rather than making attacks that might not hit.
Michael cheered and then to Jake’s surprise Helen and Jade had each arrived with looted cutlases and finished the last two monkeys off with flank attacks. Just because they did not get experience for such kills did not mean that they could not be helpful.
“We need to leave,” John said somewhat sadly.
“That was really close,” Micheal agreed.
“Do you mind if I try to cleanse a few of the monkeys before we leave?” Helen asked.
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“Sure, Jake stay and guard her. Michael, Jade and are too slow to get away if the next wave starts while we are here. Don’t get caught, either of you.”
Jake took up a stance and waited for the next wave, while Helen went from corrupted monkey corpse to corrupted monkey corpse. After getting four of them, she paused, and Jake theorized she was waiting for whatever energy bar to fill up before going for a new target. The other three had left the room by some distance and the timer was ticking down for the next wave. Helen paused again and Jake felt a bead of sweat forming. He did not like this waiting.
“Almost finished.”
Jake muted himself and then sighed. He started edging closer to the door, though he did stay between her and the place where the monkey swarm had come before.
Just as she finished the seventh cleansing, the corners of the room fell away and monkeys rushed in from every corner.
“Run!”
Helen needed no encouragement and the two of them raced out of the room as the monkeys chased them. The monkeys were not bound to the room and they pursued with relentless vigor. As they ran, their hooting and calling had a taunting function and Jake had to give it to the sound developers that he really wanted to go back and teach them a lesson about laughing at him, but these numbers were too much.
After passing through a dozen room and dingy hallways, they reached the outside of the ship and he almost expected the monkeys to pursue them outside as well, but while they stuck their heads out and chittered loudly, they shied back from the light of the sun.
The five of them stood on the top of the hill over looking the beach and about level with the second ballista bank in the galleon and at the monkeys swarming over the whole surface. Jake felt like panting, but that would have been stupid and he didn’t want to look dumb in front of the others, so he stayed quiet.
Michael had no such compunctions and said, “You know we don’t have a name for our group yet. I think we could do something really cool.”
“What were you thinking would make a cool name?” John asked, somehow not immediately doing the right thing and saying there was no need for a party name.
“The Cutlass Crew! We all have a cutlass from the dungeon and it is the first dungeon that we have all gone through together.”
Jake remained muted and withheld his displeasure and hoped for sanity to prevail. Team names were dumb, unless you were actually representing a group and there was a tournament being organized, with prizes but if Michael thought this, Jade might also think this and Jake did not want to make fun of an idea that she held to, at least without more planning.
“That’s dumb,” Jade said.
“Why?”
“We aren’t even sure we are going to keep making a party. I am not on that much and I think most of the time I am not going to be using a cutlass. Plus I need money, so I am planning to sell mine.”
Before John could weigh in on the conversation a character in a long, green, very new looking duster case me over and sent them a link to a chatroom.
“Should we join?”
“If he’s a weirdo, we have the numbers and can kill him,” Jade said far too casually.
“Let me ask what he wants,“ John said before typing his question in the local chat feature.
Were you five all in that dungeon? I am planning to go in tomorrow with a few friends I wanted to pick up some information on it. We are hoping to cleanse it!
“Seems like he is not a weirdo,” John said before he dropped out of their chat group presumably clicking the link.
All of them moved over and made their introductions, by their name or their character name as the case may be. Basically everybody used character names, except Michael, who didn’t actually like being called by a barcode.
“Great to meet you! I am new to this… my current character is Titus Morgan, which I think is the big family here? You can call me Titus or Travis. Just as long as it ends with an ’s’ sound I will probably answer to it!”
“Hi Travis,” Michael said in a way that made Jake cringe.
John stepped into the silence before it could grow awkward and said, “Well it was harder than we were expecting and I think all of us are fine with it being gone. It is a madhouse down there and just wrong. Lots and lots of corrupted monkeys and evil parrots. Also we saw a few skeletons that animated if you tried to take the loot, but they weren’t too dangerous.”
“Cool! How hard would you say it was?”
“We only got twelve rooms in,” Jake said somewhat dejectedly before adding, “The monkeys when they die, release a corruption field which has an anti-stamina effect.“
“Oooh, that is interesting. Yeah, down I really want to cleanse this place! I could see another group just leveling with it, but if the forces of Chaos make a push, this is an obvious pivot point for an advance and we don’t want whatever forces they have being helped by crazy monkeys! Ok, so if you guys are interested my group is gaming tomorrow night and we are stilling to do it, even if we have to do it alone. Want to come with us?”
“What do you think guys?” John asked.
“Guys and girls,” Jade corrected before responding, “I guess. How many people do you have in your group?”
Titus said, “We are three, so far. The rest of my friends are kind of scattered right now, but I think it will still just be three. I’m a Fighter and I don’t have my class yet, but my friends are both Patters that are healer, cleanser combinations.“
“Cool! That should help a lot. Ok, make sure you bring lighting. Everybody good with tomorrow night? It is a Monday,” John said.
Jake checked his calendar and said, “What time? I have a language class at 8. Eastern Prosperity Time.”
“That’s rough,” Titus said before saying, “We are meeting up at 6:10 in Eastern Prosperity Time, so let’s say meet here at 6:20 EPT? That will be tight, but it should work. My friends work fast.”
John thought for a few minutes and then said, “Well I am good with it. Especially if we are cutting off just before 8. I have a math test on Tuesday, but 8 to 9 should be good for study, right?”
“Right, burn that midnight oil!” Titus said cheerily and the plan was set.
Breakdown on the Cinematic CHAOS Scene in “Universe of Heroes by Decree,” published on a obscure blog. (Published on the 1st of October)
As of this morning there is a new feature to the hit new Server-World in the Universe of Heroes by Decree, a franchise owned by Sword, Board and Song™. Mechanically it is a skippable cut scene. In universe it shows the view of the [Head Patter of the Light] who is a non-player character who, through the ‘patting’ of space and time, is able to view the preparations of the forces of Chaos. If you let it play out to its full length it has this character give his nervous account of the new horrors of Chaos he has seen and the forces that the [Lord of CHAOS] has summoned to his service.
At a technical level the art is amazing, especially the obvious Sword, Board and Song™ written characters. Though some of it is just frankly weird. Apparently the company has allowed companies to bid for this as a place of advertisements, and some people bid on it.
I do not understand marketing people.
So right next to the gibbering horrors from an unknown dimension is a snappily dressed man with goat horns showing off his Molex Watch. Even worse, the [Lord of CHAOS] has a Molex clock in his lair, connected to a Molex calendar giving the time in seconds until he is able to field his armies at full power.
So far the five companies openly funding Chaos are as follows.
1. Molex Watch Making.
2. North County Custard Shop. (The [Lord of Sloth] has like thirty of their empty tubs around his throne.)
3. Keyboard Kings. (Some of the techno-demons are wearing branded headphones.)
4. Cotoolbox. (The enslaved humans are wearing collars that are being made on a branded CNC machine, though I don’t think Cotoolbox usually powers their machines with the blood of slaves.)
5. Sidermark Five Star Travel (I kind you not, ten of their luxury planes land to unload a troop of evil shadow men in suits, with their pin!)
Let me reiterate, I don’t understand marketing people.
Interestingly, the board of Sword, Board and Song™ has announced that any contracts hired to fit into Chaos will actually make the armies of stronger! Given the nature of our ‘marketing by any means culture,’ I fully expect this to become a regular series.