Cuby had drifted away from the group and sat at the base of a tree. I joined her. “Thoughts?”
“Mm,” she said, frowning. “Everything is too low for us. We haven’t seen anything that matches our effective level, or even close. And this….” she made a broad gesture that included the bridge, the camp behind us, and the cavernous entrance to the dungeon further down the river. “This is all still starter level. Where are we supposed to find level 20 enemies? The next level of dungeons?”
I shrugged. “We can ask them. If anybody knows where the levels start getting higher, they will.”
“If Mirrakatetz and this harbor are any indication, there are more low-level dungeons spread through this whole area,” Cuby said. “We might have to pass quite a few of them to get out.”
“If it’s just a matter of reaching the end of the starter zones with their starter dungeons, then whoever spawned near the edge will have an advantage,” I said. “Everyone else we run into we should hopefully out-level.”
“If everyone ends up heading toward the higher-level zones, we could ambush them,” said Cuby. “The mountains funnel people fairly well, even if we’ve mostly been jumping over them and gliding.”
“It’ll depend on whether the higher levels are all in one direction or not,” I said, nodding. “If everyone ends up heading the same way… it would probably be better to patrol along the border and kill players who want to level.” It didn’t sound very noble or glamorous… but it would work.
“Speaking of killing players,” Cuby said. “You’re giving these people a lot of chances.”
“I know.”
“Leaving me in camp, going alone with all of them into the dark cave—if they wanted to kill us and take all our stuff….”
“I’m not even sure they could,” I said. “My Defense Rating is too high. And Cerebral and Empyreal Aegis cut down all their crowd-control spells to almost nothing, now that they’re doublecharged.”
“The knockdown and impale still work,” said Cuby. “So does Jolting Shout.”
“Okay, the warrior stuff still works—maybe there’s an aegis for that one, too. But the point is: I think I could get away if they did jump me. I’ve got too many hit points and resistances for them to break me before I could cast a Haste and leave. Also, we’re trusting them.”
“I know,” said Cuby. “That’s what I was getting at when I said you’re giving them chances to kill you: we’re trusting them. Why?”
“We want them as allies,” I said.
“But you didn’t need to go into the dungeon with them for that,” said Cuby. “We could’ve just killed all their enemies and then taken a rest.”
“We’re trying to show we care about life,” I said. “So I offered to come keep them safe.”
“Mm,” Cuby said. “That makes sense, I suppose.” She shrugged. “You understand these people better than I do. In the Hierarchy, a taxin el who showed his throat like this would be seen as incompetent, not trustworthy.”
“Do these people remind you much of the taxin el?”
“No,” she said. “Well—yes, in that they look a little bit like them, even if their skin pigments are different and their hair pigments aren’t as varied. And they talk and act like them, at least a little.” She shook her head. “But no, they’re not like the taxin el. Alona gave those chosen boons away would also be considered a sign of incompetence.”
I laughed. “That’s ridiculous. It should be the other way around—she’s the leader, and if she’s secure enough in her position that she can give away that power, it shows she’s trusted.”
Cuby shrugged. “I didn’t say the taxin el were right. Though I understand Alona’s decision more than yours.”
I sighed, leaned back against the tree. “If I come out of there with a weapon that has magic affinity,” I said. “It’ll have been worth it.”
“Weapon or not, it’ll be worth it as long as you can get them to trust you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Say: how hard do you think it will be to convince a strong fighter of theirs to join us? I was thinking we could look once we got back to town.”
Cuby shrugged. “No idea, but it doesn’t sound easy. They’re not one of your people, not really—and you’ll be asking them to die for real if we fail. It won’t be as easy as just asking a lamue to abide their directives and do as you say.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Why not ask these ones?” Cuby said, jerking her head back toward the camp. “They’re probably the best fighters they’ve got.”
“I will,” I said. “But I expect Alona will want to keep them. They’re going to need some kind of defense force.”
“I don’t know about Hallah, though.”
I frowned. “Because of priest pilgrim? Isn’t stacking grace the whole point of… grace? Lots of miracles, lots of blessings?”
“Sure,” she said. “And maybe the whole hierarchy is wrong, but there’s so much overlap—pilgrim doesn’t grant any miracles or blessings that priest doesn’t already grant.”
“She’s a support healer, though,” I said. “We need one of those. If neither of us has to carry the blessings around, we both have more room for iconics. I get more spells, you get more… damage. And we’ve got a High Priest card that’ll let her regenerate grace—that’s gotta be pretty good.”
“We should ask her about it,” Cuby said, seeming unconvinced. Then she added: “If it comes up, that is.”
“I’ll ask,” I assured her. Then I yawned and leaned against the tree. “Sitting down made me tired. Sun’s almost up, but I’m going to want to sleep soon—say, maybe if we go back to town with these people, one of them can have us over for a real meal.”
“A meal?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll sit around the table and share all sorts of dishes. A real meal between humans—it’ll be great.” I had to stop for a moment and think after I said this: did the NPCs cook? Did they have to eat, or were they like us?
Surely they knew how to cook….
“Dishes?” Cuby asked. “How many dishes are there?”
I told her a little more about mealtimes—I was describing the differences between breakfast and dinner when it was time for us to head out. Cuby stayed behind while the rest of us—literally everyone in the camp but her—went for the dungeon.
I wasn’t feeling any of the eager excitement that I’d felt as we’d approached Mirrakatetz. Mostly I was tired, and a little anxious about what we’d see. Undead were one thing in video games, but this was the Colosseum: it was too true-to-life, too realistic. Fighting undead would definitely be gross, and probably be unsettling, even if I was practically invincible.
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I walked in front with Alona, and she questioned me about everything we’d found in the previous dungeon. I told her about everything, from the lower-level wildlife outside to the seeming added range on the precision formula for the bosses.
After a while I got my chance: “Say, Hallah,” I began, turning to the elf who walked on the other side of Alona. “Why priest and pilgrim?”
She gave me an arch look. I raised my hands defensively. “I’m not criticizing, I just don’t get it.”
“Why does your friend think it’s bad?”
“Overlap.”
“There isn’t really any overlap,” she said. “Just fewer options. When priests get iconic abilities they get to choose whether to take the single ability that’s offered or to take any one of three miracles or three blessings. At first level, they have to take the blessings or miracle, but at fourth level, they can choose Efficient Spell or one of six grace abilities.”
“Wait, so they still get an iconic spell augment slot at fourth level?”
“Yes,” said Hallah. “But they can prepare a grace ability into any iconic slot—that’s part of the priest passive.”
“Okay.”
“Pilgrims are similar, but they don’t get it as part of their passive—they just get an iconic spell slot at fourth level. And they can pick whether it’s a blessing, or what are essentially demi-miracles. The demi-miracles are what make the class combination good.”
“Demi miracles?” I asked. “How do they work?”
“They’re not miracles,” she said. “But they’re still instantaneous and still powerful. Each has two uses, and recharges them slowly. I have a two-use instantaneous area of effect dispel magic and a two-use instantaneous heal spell, both because I’m a pilgrim.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. I knew from experience that dispel magic was powerful—honestly, hostile dispels seemed like my own worst nightmare. “That sounds fairly strong.”
“Fairly strong?” she asked. “Good, because it gets better. My iconic passive from pilgrim grants me resistances and secondary stats proportional to my grace. Pilgrim also grants me a damage buff to my weapon that applies to beneficial spells like healing. The spell and ability list for both classes is excellent—which is at least important for the first few days of initialization. But best of all, the instant spells that pilgrim grants are off the miracle cooldown—and the miracle cooldown is a priest’s biggest weakness. Once the first Miracle of Restoration goes out, everyone knows to kill the priest before they can throw their second. Pilgrim is the class that keeps a priest alive through that weakness.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “That all sounds well and good—so why do people think it’s weak?”
Hallah shrugged. “Your friend is stupid, maybe.”
I shook my head. “You were annoyed when she brought it up, though,” I said. “So you’ve had people ask you about it before.”
“People don’t know when to use the pilgrim’s heal,” she said. “They think you use it first, because it renews faster. It doesn’t occur to them that keeping it for the time between miracles feels inefficient, but will save their life. Also, there is a lot of overlap—you won’t know what it feels like, but casting spells with absolutely no magic affinity is a nightmare. Half the spells in the system are for the magic affinity, not divine or psychic.”
“Well,” I said, smiling. “It is magic.”
“Yeah, yeah—my point is, spellsword priest looks way better. Only a spellsword’s martial casting feature lets you cast offensive spells with weapon attacks—mine only handles defensive and beneficial spells. But they don’t get resistance buffs or any support abilities outside miracles and blessings.” She shrugged. “On paper, a spellsword priest looks like a perfect all-rounder. But a pilgrim priest is a tank, a support, and a healer—and it’s excellent at every one of those roles, compromising nothing. Trust me,” she said, shooting me a glance sidelong. “I’m right.”
I walked in silence, thinking about this for a while. I’d never really questioned Cuby’s wisdom, except perhaps the time she’d called the mage class mediocre. Was Hallah just being stubborn, or was the whole of Cuby’s system document wrong?
Alona had pulled ahead of us while we talked, and now she signaled for the group to stop. We formed a line behind her, looking ahead at where the dark water of the river met an innocuous, stony riverbank dotted with the occasional willow tree.
“Sun is coming up soon, which means the miracles and the virtue boons will return.”
I looked around me, suddenly realizing that if they’d fought off a player attack, a lot of this group might have at least one use of Boon of Mercy. Hallah would definitely have two.
“Mana shields, Alatar,” she said. “And use your buffs, but don’t supercharge them—the regular ones should still be plenty of resistance. You can conserve your energy.”
I obliged, casting my Doublecharged Mana Shield and enjoying the incredulous look that came over people’s faces as they saw the buff for the first time; it had more hit points than they did, after all. Sure, maybe some of them would figure out that I had an extra chosen boon once they hit the right level to realize I was tripling, not doubling it—but it was iconic, meaning that far less people were likely to have any idea how effective it was supposed to be at level 32 with chosen stats.
As I did this, Alona gave the group a rundown of some of what I’d told her. She wanted to go slow and steady when it came to the bosses, reserving defensive cooldowns and single-uses to be used by psychic command if the time came. She also wanted everyone to reserve any damage abilities they had, leaving powerful strikes or cooldowns out of rotation in case, say, a gigantic wyvern started chewing on someone and needed to take a few thousand damage to drop them.
It was basic stuff—having a path to retreat along, drawing bosses and monsters into areas with more cover, the works. But she seemed to know everyone’s iconic abilities by heart, and had the sense to go over even the basics and leave time for questions. I felt a little vindicated: already the NPCs seemed like they were generally better at the game than, well, most of the players.
Soon we were underway, creeping along a low stone path at the edge of the riverbank and staying as far from the water as we could. I had a Fragmented Doublecharged Mana Shield stored up in case anybody got hit by a sudden laser or something, and had dispersed some Hardlight Tethers across the group in case anyone started being pulled into the water.
They started coming for us only moments later.
Skeletons look different in real life than they do in video games. Or rather, they look pretty much the same, but they feel entirely different. The skeletons that rose up out of the water could have been trees or scaffolds if I’d seen them out of the corner of my eye: just thin black lines interrupting the shimmer of the rippling water behind them. They moved fast, the water not offering much resistance against their bare bones, rusted swords and picks in their hands.
They were… empty. I didn’t know how else to think of it: there was simply nobody looking out of their eyes, nothing thinking or reacting even as their bodies moved. The first skeleton that seemed to lock its gaze onto me sent a pang of dread straight into my gut: it was a monster that I knew I could easily take, and yet I found I was terrified of it.
Not so scared that I couldn’t cast spells, though. As dozens of the relatively weak skeletons came out of the water, I tossed out a few Doublepurging Radiances… and they destroyed the skeletons, which were level 10, instantly.
The group stayed back from the water, engaging the skeletons—hits were all absorbed by my Mana Shields, and thus my Energy, and I found myself eying my potions as my mana dropped.
Push for that clearing ahead, Alora’s voice said in my mind. Move, but take it slow. I looked ahead to see that the path had opened up, giving us more space away from the river.
As we pressed forward, two new shapes emerged from the water, splashing to the surface about twenty meters from the shore—pale, bulbous blobs. I tried to make out what they were, but didn’t realize it until I made out a fat-fingered hand on the end of an arm that looked like it had been inflated. They were bloated, floating corpses.
We made it to the clearing, backed into the added space. One of the corpses grabbed a fistful of what looked like its own flesh and hurled it at us—and pale, thick leeches rained down on us a moment later.
“And it’s awful,” I muttered, throwing out purges and looking at my potions. “That took… not even a minute.”
I moved ahead to join our front-liners and started purging the stronger monsters in the back, the aptly named Bloated Floaters, each level 11.
More .loaters appeared, and more skeletons, and then zombified crocodiles, dinosaurs, or alligators, I couldn’t tell. The horde of the dead didn’t relent, never waning until I started to wonder if constant skeleton spam was just a part of the dungeon.
Then all of a sudden a massive shift beneath the water ahead of us sent huge waves rippling out from the center of the river.
“Here we go!” Alona said, shouting. “Kill the smaller monsters—focus the monsters first! We’ll fight it alone!”
“My bet’s on: Terror of the Deep,” I said.
Then a huge surge of water erupted at the edge of our range, and a massive figure strode out of the falling surf—not a zombie tentacle monster as I’d expected, but a kind of golem. It was huge, its head ten meters above the water that came up to its waist, and it seemed to be made of nothing but rotted logs and dead trees and branches, a twisted, tangled gnarl of deadwood.
Eekriek – The Rotting Mass – Level 15 Boss