Long and short of the explanation I was listening to. Daniel/Summer invited me to leech off his group. No kidding. He clearly said leeching. I was refusing pretty strongly until he hit me with the repaying debt thing again. He also assured me that though I would not get popular, my reputation could not get any lower. It satisfied me enough when he said that he would claim he was being blackmailed by me.

I should have known that this guy would lie through his teeth. Since we were kids, he had caused a lot of damage, with me left holding the bag. I still cannot hate the guy anyway.There was a little irony somewhere, that a kid with fleet foot grew up to be portly.

That was how I ended up in his punitive group to Forest of Lasem. It took half a day of travelling to the west to reach it. He told me a little about the quest he got.

Suppression of Lasem

Forest of Lasem has been known to be cursed. It breeds monsters continuously without ceasing. Culling their numbers before it gets too dangerous will be good. Go to the forest’s depths and kill a sizable number of the monsters. More is better than less! Kill 1000 monsters!

Number left: 1000

Quest difficulty: D

Quest Requirement: Talk to the Bishop Leeroy

Reward:

Blessed items from Church of Freya.

Increased familiarity with Church of Freya

+200 public service point with Church of Freya.

Party member: 23/25

Yep. I did talk to the boring fat bishop,indeed. He was even fatter than Daniel in real life. Curse me for insulting a man of cloth, if you will. He gave me a ten minute sob story about the people suffering if the job was not done. I hate sob story from old bags. Give me a cute girl anytime, and I will listen. Give me one too young, and I will be sobbing with them too. That would be bad.

So, here I am, leaning against the city gate’s exit. We were waiting for a few more members to turn up. They were finishing their last minute shopping.

I took my time to observe Summer’s party members.

‘Two mages, a tanker, four priests, with two more archers.’ I counted.

The rest were combinations of melee classes; warriors, rogue classes, monks. The warriors were interesting. The variations in how heavily they were armored stuck out. Some wore no helmets, while some were so heavily armored, they clanked with every step. The weapons too had interesting variations. Most used two-handed swords, but one or two used two swords, axes and war hammers.

One very tall broad walked to our group. I call her broad as a joke and as reverence. She was broad indeed. And a girl. I mean, broad compared to me. She stood at least a head taller than me. Her bodily proportion was good, not mismatched. She was all covered in very heavy-looking armor. She grinned while looking down at me. I did not bother to look up too hard. I hate straining my neck like that. But there was something familiar about the very tall lady.

I did not get too many seconds to think more, because she hugged me. It also lifted me off the ground.

“Uncle Roland! Good to meet you again!” I was being swung in circles within the hug. Almost like a doll. I used the moments between the stomach-lurching panic to think a little about who she was.

“Julianne. You have grown so tall!” I exclaimed while being put down gently. She was pretty gentle with all her actions too.

“Really, Uncle Roland. You know I cannot sprout half a meter in height in the six months since you last saw me,” pouted the gigantic version of Julianne Somner.

The brunette hair was shorter. Her current haircut made her look like a professional badass female fighter that me and Daniel used to see when we were younger. Have a guess at what we were looking at, in truth.

All her facial lines were sharp,as compared to her real life body. Even the eye color was different. Instead of brown, she had black pupils. The same crooked smile however, gave her away.

“I didn’t know you can alter your height this much! I should have tried growing a foot taller! And call me Winter. We are in game now.”

“Odette is my name here. No. Normally you cannot increase your height this much. I actually did not increase my height when I made the avatar. I just picked the barbarian race. Average barbarians are much taller!”

If what she said was true, I expect that as I travel, I will see characters that are some 2.5m in height. Real intimidating.

“Still mooning after the tragic princess eh,” I was, of course, referring to her avatar’s name.

“I am not! I am now a grown up! This is just the name that came up first!” Cheeks reddening, she turned sideways. Forget her getting embarrassed. I had to step back before her heavily-armored body walloped me accidentally. As it was, it came quite close.

“Ah. You two already met.” Daniel was not late. But he was checking the preparations. We were expected to be away for at least a month.

“Summer. You lying piece of dung! All of your party members are your employees aren’t they!” I did not yell too loud. It was enough to get me noticed by several close enough though. (Author: He altered his speech so he could swear without being censored)

None of them had any hostile gazes when I joined in and Daniel told them his situation of being blackmailed by me. It took me a while to figure out. I recognized the pretty receptionist (in a priest getup), that entertained my bad flirting attempts ,eventually, when we were talking. She had been around in the company long enough to recognize me. And I never forget a pretty face.

The daughter completed the ensemble.

“Now, now. I did not lie. I told them clearly that I am being blackmailed. It is your fault for never paying attention to this sort of details. I already told you already that I also set up my research company in Royal Road.” Again with his winning smile!

“And if I remembered, you would probably do something else, right?” I asked out of curiosity.

“I have a few back up plans.” The smile turned a little nasty then. The bastard.

“Okay. We can go now, I think. Odette is the last party member.”

Daniel was probably manipulating some sort of window that I could not see. Both his hands were moving with precision, occasionally stopping here and there. I was guessing the obvious. Party invite.

Odette’s large finger tapped something on air that only she could see.

Odette joined your party.

Yep. I was right.

“Okay, that is done. How was your travel here, Odette?”

The mismatched heights pair of father and daughter in-game walked to the exit gate. Like a signal, everyone else walked out too, following the two.

“A bit boring. I had to cross a mountain and a few rivers. The bandits were probably the highlight,” she said it so nonchalantly, that she was probably a high level character.

I found out later from asking Daniel, that her level was a whopping 138, while Summer was at 86. It was a far cry from me, who was level 14. I could not find anyone lower than me, obviously.

I let them talk to their hearts’ content. This was the first time she met her father in-game. Her physical body right at this moment was in a room somewhere in London, where she was studying. Her reason for moving from barbarian territory was ridiculously…. Selfish? I wasn’t sure what to call it. Of course, she wanted to play with her father and help Uncle Ronald. Yes. But she also said that she got bored because she was the shortest one over there, anyway. Superiority complex much? Who knows. I never really tried figuring out a teenage girl’s head. I had the experience of it already too. Several times.

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“I would have thought you would pick elf race or something for their bow mastery bonus.”

We were still a couple hours from the entrance to the dungeon. We had encountered wolves, wild boars, and some bears too, on our travel there. They were dispatched skillfully by the rest of the party members. I just walked beside the boss and his daughter. And increased by a level. How nice.

“I wanted to. But their race cannot sport moustaches. All smooth on their face!” He deadpanned.

‘Seriously? Who in their right mind picks the race of their character based on their moustache!’ I thought. Apparently there was one here. Like father… like daughter.

Our party has a Mage too. One Level 90 Tolan.

No. He was a guy, for once. The more entertaining out of the two in the party. The other one seemed to be in the cusp of perpetual depression. Hell,if I was not cursed myself, I would had thought he was cursed with his emission of dark aura (non-visible).

I asked out of professional curiosity, of course. And to get him away from the nice receptionist he was flirting with. *ahem*

He was helpful. After I fumbled for topics. I asked when he started played Royal Road. I will skip the boring part since he was incredibly proud and long-winded. The dry details were, I had a different training scheme than him. He complained of being bored about reading books on his path to be a Mage. Then sitting down meditating for 30 hours. And I had to sleep on a nailed bed. I will have a word with Minalan when I am back.

He also told me several important details about <> that I would probably notice later, but was good to know then. He showed me a couple of spells that was linear in nature, but that I would learn later. Like <> that split four ways then converged.Could be used for multiple targeting if you were good with focusing. He claimed on good days, he could make it to four.

I was surprised as I actually have one <> /<> type spell, <>. It erupted out from the earth that you focused on while casting it. I saw nothing as my targets (rabbits were the last ones I tried any spell on aside from Mana Bolt) were too close to the ground. In fact, practically attached to the ground. It would be a lovely spell to use, as the erupted spikes were quite sizable and impaled the rabbit dead in a blow.

There were <> spells too like <> that exploded with you as the center. I knew about AOE stuff. But seeing the pre-image of fire rolling out before the real fire was fun. He showed me another AOE spell he had, <>. Impressive as hell.

It would probably feel like the legendary Sodom and Gomora if you were standing under the localized rain of fire appearing from the magic circle floating some 50m above ground. Super cool!

We also talked about the priest spells which also has the Mana effect of appearing in white. I saw it a few times in my previous little party experience (which I was dumped out real quick). I thought it was just a priestly spell effect.

Most heal type spells would appear like it was imploding into the player’s body. It was obviously called <> type spell. He also told me that a non-caster would not be able to see the effects of <>. I began to see the usefulness of such insight. Especially when you were fighting another caster. A warrior would have a great disadvantage as they could not tell the direction the spell would be shot. They obviously knew it would be aimed at them. But from where?

It made me wonder what my <> spell would look like from the other side’s view.

One last important information (two actually), was that if you held the spell image while casting, it would just hang around until it was fully cast. You could also control the direction the spell came from if you concentrate hard enough (only works for several types).

The last show he treated me to was him holding <> spell uncasted right above our heads. So far, I had no spell that needed to be spoken beyond a single word to cast. So I never noticed the build up well. It was so obvious for priest spells, as they had to praise Freya first before it would cast.

The process of spell build up was done a system of spoken words called <>. The length depends on the spell class. All I have at the moment were one or two word spells and thus the existence was a stranger to me.

With each word spoken, using <> ,I perceived the ghostly spell’s build up. By not speaking the final word, he held the spell in check. What he said before was not very accurate, as he explained then, that if the spell was not fully cast within 30 seconds of you reaching the last words, the Mana would still be consumed as if you were casting, but the build up Mana would fizzle out and disappear. The exceptions seemed to be all Tier 1 and below spells that could be held in suspended state indefinitely. Fun, right?

Oh. Also say “Cancel” to cancel the spell manually. Speaking the < > in error, too, would cancel the spell while consuming Mana. Apparently, for some high-level spell, it could backfire pretty bad, he said. It was called <> for jokes.

Well. Yes. It was more than two. But who cares, right?

The rest of the time after that, I was alone at the back of the group. I left Tolan back to flirt. He deserved to be left alone after giving me so much good information. There was more to the job than saying words and blasting away, apparently.

Why was I at the back? I was admiring the view, mind you. I would leave you to think what sort of view I was admiring.

“Everyone, Stop. We are here!” From the back, I could hear Summer’s voice clearly. I was too engrossed to notice the line of tall trees being parted by a dirt road.

“Gather up for buffs! Check your gear again one last time! We don’t know what to expect here!”

Well, they sort of did, since the group have a few members that ventured here before.

With that, my official dungeon experience began.

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Author's Note:

1. Credit to -The Slacker- for the diligent PR

2. Credit to several people that helped with bouncing ideas, being good listener, and random talk that leads to some creative process. No idea if they wanted to be credited for now. But I will leave it open.

3. Special Credit to Veresliosi, Vim1inc, Saxenas1 for bouncing stuff around

4. Do let me know of mistakes you find. Try as me and my PR to spot them, we might miss some.

5. Away for Saturday, likely. Tomorrow will be my last release for the week.

6. I know it is a rather short chapter. But can't keep writing long one every time.