4. Reunion with an Old Friend
“I’m sorry, I thought you would have partied with a mage before,” I said for the eighth time as Torzen cursed at me without actually swearing. We had finished off the last of the stragglers, and I was meditating to refill my bottomed out Mana pool while the others took turns berating me for not warning them more about my AOE ability.
“I thought you were attacking us, you jerk,” he said. “How do you even know that spell? Isn’t it like [Pyromancer] only? Don’t you have to be high level for that?”
“No, they just get a reduced mana cost on it that lets them use it more,” I explained. “Most [Mages] can cast it if they haven’t locked in an element. Inferno is my strongest AOE. Sorry that I scared you. I’ll stick with [Chain Lightning] from now on, that one looks less like I’m attacking the party.”
“Inferno looks like you’re attacking the party because you are literally targeting it right on top of us,” he said. “Seriously, isn’t there friendly fire in this game? I thought it was supposed to be realistic.”
“Not for large scale ground AOE while you’re in the same group,” Kaiser explained for me. “Hagi, use whatever spells you want. Torzen needs to calm his butt down. Although you should tell us now if you have any other high level spells in your spellbook.”
“I’m not sure what you mean. Like I said, anyone you see who spams fireball probably has that same spell,” I pointed out. “Even if they’re a [Mage] who hasn’t ranked up to [Pyromancer] yet.”
“No, they really don’t,” Ralts said. She was looking at me with suspicion now. “First of all, it’s really hard to cast. It takes practice to do it in combat, and the system isn’t forgiving on it like it is for low level spells. You have to be precise.”
“Maybe so,” I said, withholding the fact that this was my first time casting it at all, “But--”
“Secondly, there aren’t many situations where it’s worth casting. So it makes sense that the others weren’t expecting it. I mean, this room was the perfect setup, but on a normal pull it’s not worth draining your entire mana pool, right?” she added.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “You use that spell to deal with large groups of squishy targets. All of the elemental mages have their own equivalent. [Inferno] is fire’s.”
“It’s still not cool that you didn’t warn us better,” Torzen complained.
“Well now you know,” Kaiser said. “Now stop whining. You’re supposed to be the older brother. Warren isn’t complaining, is he?”
“Wasn’t scared,” Warren said. “Saw it in a video.”
“Whatever. I’m still calling BS,” Torzen said, but he finally began heading deeper into the caverns, still huffing about his scare.
“You realize that there’s like eight more rooms we have to clear like that, right Torzen?” Ralts asked as we went deeper. “Do you really want to single target them all down when Hagi can take care of them in one blast?”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to stand in the center of heck for the strategy to work. It’s freaky, even if the fire doesn’t burn,” he complained.
“If that bothers you, you’re really not cut out to be a tank,” She informed him clinically. “It’s totally normal for it to look like mages are blowing up their groups with magic. We’re protected by the power of friendship or something. It’s totally just because it would be impossible to clear endgame raids without having tanks stand their ground in swarms like you were just doing. It’s the same reason that [Chain Lightning] only jumps to enemies, or my AOE heals only affect you guys and not the mobs we’re killing. It makes no logical sense, but this is a game.”
I frowned, because it made perfect sense to me that those things should be that way, but I didn’t argue with her.
“That’s right. You weren’t complaining when Ralts was healing the five of us at once yesterday,” Kaiser pointed out.
“Enough,” Torzen said, now that the recrimination was on him. “Let’s just pull the next group and Hagi can DPS however he wants. But I’m not responsible if the swarm survives next time and he dies because everything chases after him.”
That was a fair possibility, although I thought it unlikely. My [Inferno] spell had lasted about five seconds, and I figured it only needed three to take the weak scorpions down. I’d be helpless if I were wrong, however.
In the next scorpion room, the group agreed to have me do the same thing, with the rogues and a very reluctant Torzen helping to bunch them up so that I could get all of them in one blast. Grudgingly agreeing that this method was much faster, Torzen eventually stopped complaining.
“How long have you been playing?” Ralts asked me as we tracked our way deeper into the caverns.
“All of my life,” I answered. Most Travelers took that as a joke, but Ralts didn’t laugh.
“I know it’s you. I won’t tell the others,” she promised. “Except I need to know if something strange is going on.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You don’t move like a traveler,” she explained. “And your voice is the same as Hail’s. I don’t really know what’s going on, but I know that you’re part of the game.”
“I’m not sure what you’re expecting,” I said. “What are you worried about happening?”
“I don’t know. Like resetting the entire game to its state months earlier, or opening a portal into one of the seven hells, or something else earth shattering like that?” she suggested.
“I don’t think so.” But honestly I never know what’s going to happen when I do stuff. Nobody believes that, but it’s true. “I’m not trying to do anything but level right now. But I don’t know how he’ll react when I meet Gyudue again.”
“Again? You’ve met him before?” she asked.
“Long story, and I’m not going to tell you,” I said honestly. “Sorry.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Don’t be. I get it,” she said, shrugging. “We’re about to come up on the spiders’ lair.”
The spiders weren’t much more difficult than the scorpions. They were elites instead of swarmers, but they only came at us four or five at a time. With my [Polymorph] taking one or two of the enemies out of the mix temporarily, Torzen was able to easily tank the reduced number of enemies effectively. Something which he’d apparently been struggling with the day before, I gathered from the chatter between the others.
The first boss of the instance was the spider queen. She wasn’t difficult, however. A ‘tank and spank.’ The hardest part was once she died, because eight baby spiders hatched from eggs attached to her abdomen. They died easily, but Torzen had run himself out of Energy during the primary boss and, once she was no longer attacking him, he didn’t have the Anger saved up to pull aggro of all the adds off of the healer. I [Polymorphed] two to help, and slowed two more, but Ralts was still forced to kite around the spider’s lair while the melee dps chased after their targets and I regenerated my Mana.
A pair of boots with +5 dexterity and +4 Vitality dropped, and Kaiser passed them to Warren, despite the fact that the rogue was doing almost twice the DPS as the Urchin, and I don’t think the extra Dexterity was going to help Warren do better.
It was probably just because Warren was a kid, and he seemed a little shy. He only stood up for himself a few times when Torzen was teasing him.
The final wing of the dungeon, which led into the room where the Gemos Queen once waited, involved Pit Pythons, which had no aggro table. They were twelve feet long, but were not constrictor snakes. They were large and venomous, and fought from a coiled position. Unless you were ranged, in which case they launched at you from over thirty feet away. The purpose of these fights, of course, was to teach Travelers to dodge. This was a training instance, after all.
Getting bit wasn’t immediately fatal, and Ralts was able to cleanse the venom. So it didn’t really matter that Torzen, Warren, and Kaiser all took more bites than they missed. They glared at me suspiciously when they realized that I was avoiding all of the snakes that charged in my direction, but I just shrugged.
“I’m ranged, you’re melee. Your job doesn’t come with hazard pay. That’s just the way it is,” I informed them. Torzen grumbled a little bit about ‘pay to win’ players, but while I knew what he meant, I didn’t really care. He had a point, after all. All of my gear, except for my [Blade of Eclipse], had come from the Auction Network. I don’t know what that had to do with avoiding the Pythons, but I was the highest DPS. Not by all that much, though. Kaiser was a pretty good rogue, and he was giving me a run for my money. Warren, as an [Urchin], was barely keeping above his brother who was tanking, but even so I was a little frustrated that I wasn’t doing forty to fifty percent of the damage, as I had gotten used to doing as a [Spellblade] when I’d grouped with random people.
Further, I was finding myself frustrated with the [Mage] playstyle. I could do extremely high burst damage with Fire Volley or Flame Sphere, but doing so would run me quickly out of Mana. My competition, meaning Kaiser the rogue, opened the fight with a huge spike of damage, then did steady damage from there. It was annoying to catch up to him on damage from his opening, only to realize I was getting low on mana and had to switch to my lower damage, more efficient spells, or even stop to [Meditate] mid battle.
I tried to keep my [Meditation] in between fights, but Torzen was charging ahead without regard for my Mana, nor Ralts’s. I suppose I had gotten spoiled, playing with highly skilled players in the higher level brackets, and I really wasn’t complaining. This party was getting me to where I needed to be, after all.
It took a few minutes to clear the final room before the boss, and then we passed through the hallway leading to Gyudue’s chamber. The cavern shifted to a strange architecture unseen on the surface, and magic lamps came to light as we approached.
He sat in the throne with a glass of red wine in his hand, swirling it. <
“Hey guys, someone just hit my wake-up button,” I said. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.”
“Ah man, this is BS!” Torzen exclaimed, but I had already selected the option to drop group and, as I expected, they were shunted away from the core instance without me to anchor them.
“I’d appreciate it if you could reward them in some way for helping me come this far,” I suggested.
“I wonder if I should be pleased or annoyed that you have come to visit me, little brother. At least you have made it clear that this time you are not here to destroy me.” He swirled his wine. <
“Your spirit would have been preserved,” I protested. I stepped forward and dropped my [Illusion Magic: Disguise] spell which had been concealing my identity.
“Yes, but the story of Gyudue of the Blackest Night would have been over before the Blackest Night! ” he said. “My defeat at your hands still shames me, though you freed me from compulsions I did not realize were enforced upon me from outside. It irks me that my people’s veneration of Nyxandra came with such strings attached without our awareness. But being free from the Adversary does not make me a saint. If you came looking for further thanks than I have already given in helping you during your hour of vengeance, then I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for nothing.”
“I’ve come with a message from one called Mikal,” I explained.
“There is no one called Mikal,” Gyudue said, chortling. “There are many called Mikal. I am surprised that you’ve made contact with it, however. Tell me, did it rip you to shreds before or after it gave you its message?”
“I found him quite reasonable, actually,” I argued. “I do not understand why he said that his people hated all surface dwellers, but he was willing to talk and did not challenge me for the Dungeon Core.”
“I see. So you really did face one Mikal. Interesting. It’s very hard to isolate them, but if one was summoned to defend a dungeon core, I suppose it is possible.” Gyudue sounded contemplative. “Whatever words it gave you are poison. It sent you here as a trap. The question is whether the trap was for you, me, or someone else. Whose ear does the poison drip into? I do not know whether it is better to hear your message or turn you away immediately.”
“And in truth, I do not know whether or not I should deliver it,” I said honestly. “Mikal said it would cause you pain.”
“If that is the case then you must deliver it,” Gyudue said immediately. “I would not trust that Janus-faced entity with a message of peace and understanding. But a message of pain … the only thing that Mikal loves more than opening wounds is rubbing salt in them. I would hear what news it gives me.”
“Mikal said ‘your sister succumbed.’ That was the entire message.” I informed the drow.
The wine glass cracked in Gyudue’s hand. “That cannot be.”
I winced, seeing that the glass had cut his hand. He was bleeding, though I doubt the wound was costing him very much of his health. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you know what she succumbed to?” he inquired.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Mikal did say something about cancer, but I don’t--”
“My people have the best healers in all of the Deepdark. We live for centuries, unless violence or misadventure finds us. No illness could have taken my sister. And she does not venture outside the palace gates. No. My sister succumbed to politics. Mikal sends you to send me word that my sister was murdered, Hail Jeoran of Yuikon. I thank you and curse you for bearing the message.”