CHAPTER 2
Playing inside the game was just as dangerous as mobs spawning outside of the game. Reports of objects from the real world were spawning into the game world causing just as much havoc.
Maria was running a new dungeon with her teammates. They were among some of the strongest in the game being at rank SSS. The dungeon was the newest from the most recent patch before the game had become plagued with issues from quantum computer overload. The dungeon entrance was located in the real world in the alleyway were Kevin had been injured. The dungeon looked like old abandoned Aztec ruins. I had vines growing on crumbling pillars with forests and trees sticking out in every room. The dungeon was the hardest by far. No one had managed to clear rank SS of the dungeon. Maria and her group had finally made it to the boss’s room. Maria was working overtime trying her best to keep her group alive. The boss was a red dragon. It could summon multiple mobs at once.
The red dragon’s usual spawns according to the game’s wiki, were five goblins, four hobgoblins, three ogres, two Lycanthropes, and one small behemoth. The goblin spawns were the easiest to deal with since their rank was E. Even a midlevel player could handle the group.
They consisted of two swordsmen, two archers, and one mage. Each one was also equipped with a dagger. Goblins wore little nothing more than torn rags over the bodies. They stood around 3 feet tall. Their skin is grey color that is wilted like an old paper bag. The biggest issue is that they were usually summoned the most, with up to five pairs spawning at a time.
The four hobgoblins were rank D and were usually spawned in up to three groups of four. The hobgoblins were a bit more of a challenge as one of them could heal and cast magic attacks. The other three were able to use swords and bows. Hob goblins were a bit bulkier than goblins with the same appearance. Except they mismatched armor instead of old worn rags.
The three ogres were ranked D and had high defense and protection. They lack magic resistance making it easy to kill them with magic as to melee attacks. Only one group of ogres would spawn. The ogres only carried a war hammer that could do a high amount of damage if they hit someone. It ignored a player’s gear defense and protection. Only buffs could keep the damage to a minimum. They were around 6 feet in height. They had green skin and wore metal and leather armor around their chests, legs, and arms.
The two Lycanthropes were rank E and immune to all magic attacks. Making them a mage’s worst nightmare. They have very high agility so they can dodge attacks quickly. They spawned in two groups two. Lycanthropes had violet fur and very sharp claws. The looked like werewolves.
Finally, the small behemoth which was rank B was the toughest to deal with. It had high defense and protection, high magic resistance, and could deal a moderate amount of damage. The only way to kill it is by attacking all for legs to put it into a vulnerable state for 30 seconds. It has a lower chance of spawning depending on a party’s strength. A small behemoth was black and brown in color. It looked like an oversized dog at about 15 feet in length and 6 feet in height. It had red glowing eyes as well. Lastly, all five spawn types can spawn as one of each in a spawn, depending on the party’s strength.
The red dragon itself was on a whole other level depending on the dungeon’s difficulty. Spawns would appear based on stats and difficulty. Maria’s party was running on rank SS mode. The red dragon itself wasn’t the biggest issue but the constant number of mobs kept spawning. In SS mode there would be a pillar the team would have to destroy to deal any damage to the red dragon when its HP dropped to or below 50%. The red dragon would spawn in two groups for each kind of spawn. One of the spawns had to all have some sort of damage for the pillar to be able to take damage. The pillar would lose 10% of its hp when a group was killed. Otherwise, the pillar was indestructible. The process would have to be reset if another mob that wasn’t part of the group was dealt any damage. When the pillar’s HP hit 0 a player had to physically topple the pillar. The pillar would glow with an electic color when it was at 0 HP. The red dragon would cast [HELL FIRE] (raid wipe AoE) after two minutes had gone by if the pillar wasn’t toppled The red dragon would swipe with its claws or launch repeated fireballs. The red dragon’s stats would double at 50% HP. When its HP was below 25%, the stats would quadruple.
Maria and her group were grinding along without much effort, but the consent spawning of the mobs was proving to make the dungeon more difficult to finish. They kept with their game plan of killing the spawns in the order of the hobgoblins, the small behemoths came after, the ogres were next, then the Lycanthropes, and then finally the goblins. Maria kept on blasting at the mage hobgoblin whenever it spawned first to keep it from using Full Restore or Full Recovery, having all the mobs back to max health would be a death sentence with Full Restore. The mage hobgoblin would cast Full Recovery on the small behemoth so taking out the mage hobgoblin when it spawned was priority number one. “Status check on the party,” said Maria. She checked the status of her comrades to determine what to do at the exact moment.
Maria was the party’s healer. She stands at around 6 feet in height, with a slender, thin body. She has emerald, green eyes and hair that is thin and silky that extends to her shoulders. She wears a healer’s robe that is white and green. She has brown leather gloves on her hands with white leather high heels. She carries a medal staff with a blue lotus flower on its tip.
The party’s tank, Cory was busy keeping the red dragon from blasting the party to bits with its attacks since it couldn’t be dealt damage until the pillar behind it was broken. Cory is an African American male that is 6 feet and 2 inches in height. His body is ripped out like a bodybuilder. His hair is a spiky black color, and his eye color is brown. Cory‘s gear was gold and silver armor, along with a gold and silver sword and shield.
Try not to get near me when it is launching the fireballs don’t want someone to get barbequed said, Cory. Brad AND Samantha were frantically dealing damage to each mob pattern spawn to get an idea of which was the one to break the pillar.
The party’s two attackers were Brad and Samantha.
Brad is 5 feet and 11 inches in height. He had whitish skin, light brown hair, and green eyes. He wears light armor that is blue and silver. His gauntlets are leather around the wrists and arms. The fingers are armored with a light blue color. He also wears light blue leggings and his boots are made of light blue and silver armor. His weapons of choice are a light blue knight lance, and silver and light blue daggers. Since he specializes in close combat attacks.
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Samantha is about 5 feet and 6 inches in height. She has black long slim hair and blue eyes, with white skin. She wears red leather gloves. Her boots are red with crimson leather on the upper part of the boots. Her leggings are a dark crimson color. Her main outfit is red which looks like a band conductor’s uniform. Her weapons of choice are a staff and a bow that can shoot mana arrows.
Each set of mobs in the spawn was getting taken out. The group was down to two groups of goblins, one group of ogres, and two groups of Lycanthropes. Everything was going as planned until Cory ended up tripping into one of the Lycanthropes. “CRAP!” shouted Cory. As he stumbled and staggered right over into the pillar. The dragon shot a fireball right at Cory. He quickly did an evasive roll to avoid the fireball. Right as the fireball hit the pillar. A portal suddenly materialized out of nowhere and one group of the 5 goblins was sucked into it. Maria could only look at what had just occurred. Realizing they would have to go through the portal they started to finish off all the other mobs in overdrive.
The team quickly split up to take out the remaining spawns. Cory just kept on provoking the red dragon. I’ll get the goblins and help Samantha with dealing with the ogres, said Maria. I’ll debuff the Lycanthropes as well for you Brad and Samantha. Maria and Samantha quickly started shooting high magic spells at the ogres, there were just hoping they didn’t land a blow for a reset. After a few minutes, the ogres were down.
Now Maria couldn’t do anything but just buff her comrades. “I’m going to apply aggressive agility to outmatch the Lycanthropes’ agility Maria said. She cast the AoE onto all the Lycanthropes, their agility was cut in half rendering them more vulnerable since their speed had decreased. “I got group A”, said Brad. “I got group B,” said Samantha. They both finished them off with ease. Brad cut the Lycanthropes of the group in half. Samantha showered group B of Lycanthropes with a volley of arrows. Samantha used his HOMING SKILL (which was a rank SS skill that allowed one to have a 100% accurate hit. The Cool down lasted a whole day to reuse though). The arrows pierced at high-speed finishing them off. At the same time, Maria cast thunder with 5 charges and targeted the goblins. All five goblins were blown to ash.
With all the mobs blown to bits, the four of them were planning on what they should do going through the portal to get the other goblins, that was if they could. They were busy talking it over while dodging the red dragon’s attacks. Cory looked over at the pillar and saw it began to start losing more HP. “Is it me or is the pillar getting more depleted,” said Cory, right as he evaded a fireball everyone else looked over at the pillar and all said it was dropping. The red dragon was getting more viscous as the HP on the pillar dropped. The red dragon then staggered right in front of the portal and the pillar after it was blasted by a meteor from Samantha. “Crap,” they said aloud. I was trying to blast it out of the way of the pillar, said Samantha. It was making it hard for the group to focus on trying to get to the portal and pillar as it was behind the red dragon. As the team was trying to figure out how to get around the red dragon. The HP on the pillar kept dropping until it hit 0 and just needed to get toppled over by one of the players. They all agreed to just go for it since the pillar was rapidly approaching 0 HP. About a minute later the pillar was at 0 HP. The team knew they were in trouble. The red dragon was now in full rage mode, its agility and movement speeds had skyrocketed. The red dragon began to cast HELL FIRE. The group only had two minutes to topple the pillar or they were dead. They all made attempts on running past the pillar, but the dragon just kept knocking everyone back. One minute remained, and they tried running two on two to get past the red dragon, it folded its wings out and flapped them violently sending them all flying back. 30 seconds remained, this time they all went in at random throwing objects and evading, but the dragon just blocked every attempt. The party was going into a panic now as they watched the clock ticking away. 7-6-5-4-3…, but right as the cast timer was at 3 seconds an object came flying in from the other side of the portal and slammed into the pillar. Knocking it over with less than 1 second to go. Everyone in the group was in shock. The red dragon even turned in surprise. “What just happened?” said Cory with a confused expression. “I don’t know,” said Samantha who was just as baffled. We can figure this out later said Maria we need to kill the red dragon. We have our chance now. The group easily killed the red dragon in less than 15 seconds. The red dragon never knew what hit it because it was staring at the strange object that had flown in from the portal.
Maria went over to the object that had flown in from the portal. It was a book bag. The strangest thing was it looked familiar to her. “Where have I seen this before”, thought Maria. Just then she was receiving a message from one of her friends on the game. He was asking for help. He needed an antidote potion; he had been poisoned. She responded by saying she couldn’t do much to help for the time being. She had a feeling her friend was going to die in the game and would lose progress. She said there was nothing she could do at the time, but she could help him regain his lost experience points. The next message she got disturbed her. He told her he was walking home and was attacked by five goblins that had just appeared out of a portal into the real world. He also told her he had a book bag that had flown into the portal. He tried to slug it on a goblin but was shot by an arrow in his leg and overshot it right into the portal. Maria’s group was just mingling about the weird happening with the red dragon and debating if they should go into the portal. I have a hunch of what is on the other side, said Maria. She grabbed the book bag. She then dashed for the portal. Her comrades looked in shock as she jumped through. They gathered their wits and followed suit.
Maria and her team ended up on the other side of the portal. The first thing Maria realized was that she had found herself in an alleyway. She looked down both ways of the alleyway to see it was blocked off with a matrix flow of numbers on an invisible barrier. Well, this is new. She happens to notice a single individual collapse to the ground. She realized it was her friend Kevin. She ran over to him out of fear he was dead. She checked his player status to show that he had been severely poisoned. She knows this couldn’t be treated by any real means of medical attention. She immediately began using a few antidote pots to try to stop the poison. Her friends looked on in worry and wanted to ask questions, but she waved them off. Maria told her friends this was someone she knew in real life. “After I’m done treating this poison, I’m going to take him over to the hospital.” She said. “I’ll make sure he gets the best care, my parents are head of the hospital,” Maria said a quick goodbye to her friends and logged out. After Maria had logged out and treated her friend for the poison effects. She took him to the hospital as fast as she could. While on her way she called her parents to tell them of the situation. Her parents quickly got the best hands they had to perform medical attention. Maria arrived at the hospital. She was quickly met by medics specifically for video game-related injuries. She watched as they took him away into the emergency room. She pleaded with her parents to not let him die. A few hours after he had been treated his vitals and condition were stable. She talked to her parents and told them she had to make a report to the Dungeon Dwellers GO! about her report of their encounter.