Chapter 10. Guild Banner
Dimitri seemed entirely more tolerable once the systems AI’s gave him that last warning. I liked people being upfront with me, but someone as off-the-hinges as Dimitri could use a little filter. He was also being overly explanatory about the functions of Boss creatures, but he spoke dryly whenever he talked about it. Except for one he discussed killing players, that seemed to perk him up. He suggested we go to one of the nearby monster hives and recruit some minions, then find a small guild of players we could attack for a ‘Guild Banner’. I was told that hanging up a desecrated guild banner would be the quickest way to form a clan, the monster equivalent to a guild. There were also artifacts and buildings we could purchase or build that could give us different and similar effects, but stealing a guild banner would be the quickest and most feasible way for us to do that currently. There was the side effect of the guild hunting us down to get it back, but Dimitri didn’t seem worried about it. If we took a fresh low ranked banner there wouldn’t be too much the guild could do about it. He knew of a town not too far off but didn’t have any information on a monster's nest we could go to. He told me that although we were both tier one bosses, he was designed to be an even match for a low level party of five or six, and I was designed to be taken on by a single low level but organized raid group, up to twenty five. That means anything more than thirty newbie players would be really tough for us.
“The minimum for a guild is twenty, so we should try and strike a freshly formed one if we can. But as long as we kill the highest ranking player currently online we can always grab it and run.” Dimitri may be a coward and an asshole but he was truly an asset. Not many players functioned the same, and my unique experience was way further off than others. I was grateful to have him.
“Oh by the way, is it cool if I turn you into a symbiote?” Dimitri seemed to be thinking about it earnestly. Weighing his options.
“Yeah I guess we could do that, although I think we would be better off working separately until we round our little legion of monsters out a bit. But I’m kind of curious about the experience.” I instructed him to put his hands face up like Bell did, although I didn’t think that was a necessary part based on the class video I watched. I used the skill on the long armed shadow figure and he turned to goo, although he seemed more liquid-like than Bell had. He wrapped himself around my shoulders and arms, completely covering them. A cape elongated, touching the ground, as did my arms and new claw-like appendages. On my character sheet I saw three differences, My fist attacks were significantly stronger and now caused magical slashing damage, there was a massive bonus to stealth, And I had a passive skill called [Undying in Shadows] that boosted my health regeneration the darker the area I stood in, by a base amount and percentage.
‘Testing, one two, testing.’ Dimitri’s wispy voice said indirectly inside my head.
“I can hear you.” I replied out loud.
‘Nice, hey you got my [Undying in Shadows] skill. Pretty sweet right?’
“Yeah this is going to be super useful”
‘It would have been better if I had some autonomy in this form but don’t be surprised if I'm the best and most powerful ally you ever meet.’ I laughed at that.
“I’m sure you’re the epitome of power in this world.”
‘And don’t you forget it. Now release me so we can sniff out some monsters to dominate.’ I obliged and we continued making our way vaguely in the direction of the town he was familiar with. We rounded it by miles trying to find a monster nest to negotiate with, and it didn’t take long to find one.
“Ah these spider mobs suck, we could probably skip out on these and find something more powerful.” Dimitri scanned the webbed platforms above us in the trees. “All dumb dumbs too, no second evolutions either.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to grab a few right?” Dimitri shrugged his black ethereal shoulders.
“Yeah, I guess not. You currently can have four more monsters in the party, so I wouldn't burn it all on them. One couldn’t hurt though.” I found the nearest spider, only a few of this nest were on the ground.
“Hey, do you..uh. Want to join up with us?” A screen popped up with information on the spider, including the cost in [Monster Democracy] stat points. It would cost me five points to recruit the spider. It didn’t seem expensive. I did the same to another, skipping it because I wanted to find a breeding pair for the island. Once I recruited two I went to turn one into a symbiote when Dimitri stopped me.
“Don’t waste a symbiote slot on them unless you really want to shoot webs, you only got three left. Maybe once one of them evolves but right now it’s going to be a waste.” He had a point. I didn’t really need what they offered, and I could always transform them if I felt like I did. I was tempted to bring them back to Tergga now, but Dimitri seemed eager to try and grab a banner. We continued through the forest, now heading directly to the village. We ran into a few deer along the way and Dimitri took them out with a single swipe each. To take advantage of Dimitri’s abilities we slowed our pace and waited for night to fall before leaving the relative safety of the forest, choosing to stay at the edge of the treeline and scout the place. Dimitri had lived in this village as an NPC before he turned into a ghost, so he had some insights on how to strike.
“The whole west side of the village is player owned and run, we should avoid the adventurers guild and mages guild near the center of town and go for a player owned guild.”
“Got any idea on their size?”
“None of them are as small as we would like, if that’s what you're asking. And all of them are loosely allied with each other. As fun as it would be to wipe a whole guild we should probably just target the guild leader and take the banner. Save the mayhem on our way out. You wanna make me into a symbiote or stay separate?”
“Symbiote. I don’t have the stealth bonuses you do and it’d be better to sneak in. I’ll release you if I get caught.” He didn’t argue, and without prompting, coiled around me like a dark mantle, making my arms grow much longer then I was tall. I had to either keep them crossed in front of me or drag them behind myself. It looked a bit awkward but I didn’t mind having a longer reach. I commanded the spiders to wait for us in the treeline and we moved in on the village.
There were no walls in the village so I was able to approach from an angle that kept me off the main roads and away from prying eyes. I snuck up to the closest building and pressed myself against it, peeping around the corner. There were quite a few people walking around, even at night. Many with weapons and armor, leading me to believe it was mostly players like Dimitri said would inhabit this part of town. The buildings were spaced in a loose way that didn’t provide me with an alleyway to sneak through.
‘Damn these little cretins are all over the place’ Dimitri said directly into my head. I didn’t reply but agreed. After a few minutes of waiting the number of players didn’t die down. I didn’t want to stay in one location for too long but also didn’t want to just rush in, so I circled around the edge of the village looking for a better path forward. Eventually I found a potion shop with a backdoor facing the outside of the village. I checked the handle and it was unlocked. An argument could be heard in the front room of the small wood building.
“I don’t care how often you promise to buy from me, one hundred gold each or you can find another potion shop.”
“Invisibility potions sell for fifty gold in Rengi city! Tops!”
“Why don’t you make the three day trip to Rengi city then?”
“Just pay him David.” A third, feminine voice said.
“We would only have enough for four, we need eight so we can reapply the invisibility if something goes wrong.”
“Look you can take it or leave it, the ingredients for this kind of potion are not easy to come by.” I moved forward into the hallway leading to the main room, the store owner positioned with his back to me, and the two players were on the other side of the bar facing him.”
‘Give it to him! Use my claws.’ Dimitri said. I used my racial [Charge] skill and jumped at the last second, cutting his head off in a single swipe. ‘BOOYAH!’
“Monster!” The woman screamed out as she swung her large crossbow from her back into her hands in a practiced motion. I was already on top of the one named David before he could draw his halberd. I ignored the crossbow bolts that hammered into me as I clawed at David, knocking him prone. He was much beefier than the potion shop owner but it only took five quick strikes for me to finish him off. In that time the women put three bolts into me, taking my health down by about five percent.
“Why is a boss in this shop? Someone help!” she screamed as I rushed her. She only took two slashes of my long inky claws to take down. Quickly, I peered out the window and saw no one was responding to the women's yells. They either didn’t hear her or didn’t care. Dimitri coiled off of me and moved to begin looting the bodies and store.
“Dibs on any spectral type weapons” He said excitedly, still creepy and wispy. I stayed on the window, worriedly peering out. “Hey here are those invisibility potions, cool if I take one for later?”
“Yeah that’s fine.” The coast wasn’t clearing, in fact there were even more players hanging out by a well in the center of the market area. The invisibility potions gave me an idea. I took the remaining twelve in the shop, and downed one. My body went completely invisible.
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“Oh shit good idea.” Dimitri turned into a puddle of black ink, but this time instead of stretching towards me he had to wait for me to make contact with his puddle. I reached down and scooped him up, allowing him to move into place. After he settled he turned invisible as well. ‘There are some skills that let people see invisibility but no one should have that active now.’
“Alright, let's find a guild.” It didn’t take long for Dimitri to navigate me to the three prominent guilds he remembered. Five large buildings circled like a cul-de-sac sat towering above the smaller homes around it. Two of them had large ‘For Sale’ signs indicating that no new guilds have formed in this village.
‘Two of them are generalist guilds, and one of the generalist guilds has a contract with the adventurers guild. The third is a crafting type guild if I remember correctly. I think that guy who owned the potion shop was affiliated with them.’
‘Would the crafting guild have something that would let me do symbiote crafting?’
‘Beats me, I’ve never heard of symbiote crafting before. Unique crafting is more open to your interpretation though. So you gotta carve that out yourself.’
‘I’m thinking of combining an alchemy table, an enchanting table, and an operation table. Not sure if operation tables exist.’
‘Yeah there should be something like that. You’ve got the right idea combining three of the more common crafting tables into your unique one. We could stop by a healer's hall and try to loot an operation table, and this place will likely have the other two. Healer’s hall is on the other side of town with the-’ He paused as a young woman passed by with a basket of flowers in her arms. ‘Ah shit, that was my daughter before I turned into a ghost. You’d be doing me a favor if you didn’t kill her. She likes her gig.’
‘Yeah I wasn’t planning on it.’
‘Just making sure, invisibility will run out soon.’ He was right, we had about thirty more seconds of invisibility. The potion really didn’t last long. I gulped down a second and the five minute timer reset itself.
The crafters guild had several manned stalls in front of it selling all types of gear, it was probably a great spot to sell things being right next to the other generalist guilds. Avoiding the stalls I moved around to the entryway of the guild. The stone archway had ‘Money Makers Extreme’ written across the top with an emblem of a gold coin shooting red lightning in every direction. The name was stupid but the emblem looked pretty rad. A group of three players, all elven men, walked out of the large doorway. I used that moment to sneak in without having to open the door myself and went inside. I was invisible but people could still hear me, so I walked slowly across the long rug that led into the main room of this floor. A circular bar with a bartender served a dozen or so finely dressed players. A large wooden sign hung from the bar with a glowing magical script detailing some sort of leaderboard that said ‘Monthly Donations’. In first place was the name ‘Guild Master Devon Ironfist’ with ten thousand three hundred and twenty five gold pieces. The bottom part said ‘First place* wins a flying mount’ in a smaller script the asterisk said that Devon’s placement didn’t count as first place. As I examined it someone almost ran right into me, heading straight to the leaderboard. She dropped a bag of coins into a small glowing box and the fifth place name ‘Looty McLooterson’ became the third. She seemed displeased at the ranking, and she walked straight out of the guild the way she came. We kept moving, finding a large spiral staircase that went up and down.
‘You think this Devon guy is a penthouse office or a basement lab kind of Guildmaster?’ I wasn’t sure. Based on his large contributions I’d guess he was a workaholic type, so I decided we should go down. Unlike upstairs the basement area wasn’t just one large room, but a hallway with many doors. Some had signs, like ‘Alchemy lab’ and ‘Weapon Storage’ but some were blank. The far end of the room had a large archway that said ‘Devon’s Forge’ ‘Look at that you’re not as dumb as you look.’ Dimitri was starting to let his true self show and I wasn’t sure I liked it. The hallway was empty so I pushed through with more speed than I had used upstairs. Inside the forge there were two regular dwarven women, and an eight foot dwarf with a lump face and patchy beard.
‘Why is he so big?’ I thought pointedly at Dimitri
‘Woah buddy, that’s a half dwarf half giant.’ The large dwarf hammered away at a claymore that looked like a regular sword in his hands. The other two dwarves assisted in quenching the piece and bellowing the flames as needed. Sweat dripped from the oversized Dwarfs face as he worked on an absolute masterpiece of a blade.
‘Let’s do it.’ I figured we would stick to the plan and go straight for the guildmaster. I ran in a full sprint towards the giant form hunched over the anvil, my invisibility running out of time a second before I struck. Both the assistants noticed me before I struck but it was too late. I raked my claws along his back seven times before he could spin around and face me. Two spears from either side of me stabbed into my torso, but I ignored them, fixated on taking down the behemoth with his back turned. To my surprise his health was only half-way down after ten slashes, and the spear wielding assistants had taken a quarter of my health bar away. ‘Shit he is tough.’ Devon, now facing me head on, released his grip on the orange glowing sword in his hand and let it fall to the ground. He pulled two flails that looked too big for even him to wield and charged me. It looked like he would miss, swinging the flail preemptively with so many feet between us, but the chain extended itself and hit me dead on, smacking every part of my body and sending me flying across the room.
You have taken Critical Damage!
The glow of the forge was stopping my [Undying in Shadows] ability from working to its max capacity, and I no longer felt safe in melee range. I released Dimitri who materialized with an over dramatic laugh.
“Take out the two with spears” I said as I narrowly dodged a spear strike that had almost caught me by surprise, The second spear wielded by the other dwarf women grazing me for a small slice of my health as I backed up. Devon’s second spear shot forward as the other retracted and I dropped to the ground onto my stomach while casting [Life Spark] on myself, barely avoiding a fatal blow and getting somewhere around three fourths of my health bar full. Dimitri to my surprise followed my orders without question and was pushing one spear wielder back, causing the other to move away from me to help her comrade. Dimitri howled with laughter as he drained the womens health bar with slash after slash. I rolled as the first flail swung in an overhand attack, leaving a crater where I was just laying. I summoned my staff and activated [Enhanced Flames] onto the half-giant half-dwarf. It was effective but not a killing blow, he still had a fourth of his health bar left. That is until he pulled a potion out of his inventory and downed it, bringing his health up to full.
“Damn it!” I said as I narrowly dodged another flail strike. It seemed like they were speeding up. I was unsure if that was a skill or him just getting his stride. “Two can play at this game.” I downed another invisibility potion while running to the right, as soon as I was invisible I cut left. Both wrecking ball sized flails swung wildly in the area I would have been if I didn’t cut left. I spared a glance at Dimitri to see he had killed one of the Dwarves, and was monologuing to the other one while standing over her. I couldn’t give away my position so I didn’t warn Dimitri about the flail that was heading towards him. It crushed both the shade and the dwarven women, killing her instantly and leaving Dimitri with a sliver of health left. I ignored him, using the momentary distraction to get in closer to the guildmaster. I activated [Enhanced Flames] taking out a quarter of his bar. My invisibility deactivated and the guildmaster made a smug look before retracting the flails all the way, making them into two giant maces. He pulled both his arms back ready to smash me in-between the both of them as he used some skill that gave him a golden aura. I desperately activated my [Charge] ability without a plan and headbutted the titan in the chest, dodging his execution style attack by getting closer than he anticipated. [Charge] only had a five percent chance to cause a knockback effect on an enemy, and this was the first time it worked for me. My headbutt sent him ass first into the large circular pit of embers he was using to heat the sword he had been working on. His health still had about a third left, so before he could drink another potion I activated [Enhanced Flames], not only causing a spout of fire to come from my hands, but also causing the flames in the pit to be upgraded to my [Enhanced Flames]. His health bar zeroed out instantly as the ember pit ignited like someone had tossed fuel into it. By the skin of our teeth the battle was ours. I looked around and found that Dimitri had gone back into the darker hallway where he cowered and waited for his health to replenish. When we made eye contact he walked back in like he wasn’t hiding.
“Coast is still clear in the hallway.” I rolled my eyes at him.
“Alright start looting this place, I want everything not nailed down.” While he did that I snagged the large banner that hung in the back of the room, getting a prompt asking me if I wanted to ‘desecrate’ the guild banner and take it for my own. I selected ‘Yes’ and a new quest appeared.
New Quest! (Defend The Banner)
Keep the ‘Money Makers Extreme’ guild banner from the ‘Money Makers Extreme’ guild for seven days to forcibly disband the guild. Reward: Based on guild type, guild level, and guild funds.(Note: Players of the guild can not make withdrawals or deposits while you hold the banner) “Shall we run?” Dimitri coiled around me without me asking him too
“Let’s loot their alchemy lab and look for an enchanter’s lab first.” I downed an invisibility potion and ran for the hallway. Already guild members were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to figure out why they got a quest to retrieve their banner. Luckily for me that caused them to vacate the crafting rooms and head upstairs. I found an alchemy table no problem but didn’t find an enchanter's table in the short time I allotted myself to look. Once I got past the players who were starting to organize themselves I broke into a full sprint, not waiting for someone to pass through the doorway this time. I heard a few yells behind me but I had already left the guild hall, downing another invisibility potion and heading for the tree line we came out of. I grabbed both the slow moving spiders that waited for me into my arms and headed for Tergga.