41. Battlegrounds: Archer_The Quest Giver [An NPC LitRPG Adventure]

41. Battlegrounds: Archer

I was [Archer] for the first wave of battlegrounds. I quickly decided that I liked PVP as [Archer]. A lot of what I’d read on the forums about the class had claimed that they were weak in PVP due to the fact that [Power Shot] required you to brace your feet. However, I barely ever used [Power Shot], even when I was soloing. It was much better to get guaranteed Critical Strike with [Aimed Shot] by going for an anatomical weakness. [Aimed Shot] even had the same base damage as [Power Shot]. It just took more effort, since the system didn’t assist you with aiming [Aimed Shot] like it did with [Power Shot] and [Quick Shot].

This was a topic on which I and the forums were agreed. However, it seems that I was in the upper ten percent of archers. The majority were content to do the mediocre DPS associated with [Power Shot]. I didn’t get it. Apparently the system was designed to help Travelers feel like they were good at archery without actually forcing them to get good at it.

The first battleground, I was assigned to Blue Team. The battle lasted for fifty minutes, and I lost track of how many kills I earned. That doesn’t mean that Blue Team swept the field in my battleground; the score was more or less even the entire time, both Morale and Captures.

It helped that I had a pocket healer in my group who appreciated my ability to shut down mages and keep them off of her. We also had a [Warrior] who was eager to protect the both of us from [Rogue] classes. There were others who came and went, including a [Rogue] of our own who showed some serious skills.

Our battleground would have gone down the wire, using up the full hour time limit, had blue team not made a critical mistake. They left their base open, and a quarter of my team got inside, slaughtering their reinforcements as soon as they spawned. I wasn’t in that group, but I was part of the effort to slow down their main force from reaching their base to roust us from it, and I was watching proudly as their Morale ticked down to zero.

I came out of the successful battleground in an inn in Kordock. With more than an hour until the next battleground was scheduled to begin, I went down to the common room to get something to eat and kill some time. I was surprised how busy it was, filled with Travelers who were chatting excitedly about the first battleground. Not all of them had participated, but the majority had.

Nobody recognized me, with the gray hair and darker skin that I had assumed, but that suited me fine. I attempted to flag down the proprietor, but he was seemingly overwhelmed by the number of Travelers in his establishment until I <> that I needed service. Shortly afterwards, one of his tavern assistants noticed me and saw to my needs, serving me a flagon of cider and a bowl of porridge flavored with honey. It wasn’t the quality of Nile’s Inn in Eastmill, but it was a pleasant breakfast.

I gathered from listening to the conversation around me that the majority of the Travelers in the tavern had died in their respective battlegrounds and were waiting to hear whether their teammates won in their absence or not. A few more trickled in over the next ten minutes as the timer on the battleground ticked down to zero. When that happened, all participants received a notification.

Congratulations!

The first battleground (Capture the Flag!) has completed!

Your record of participation:

Player Kills

Deaths:

Flag Captures

PK assists

Capture Assists

Damage Done

1.384*10^6

Healing Done

Overall Rating:

B+

You have earned scalable rewards according to your rank!

You may select to receive your rewards now, or participate in further battlegrounds to earn even greater rewards!

Make your selection now

Claim Reward

Save participation reward for later

I was pleased with my rank, and while I was curious what the rewards would be for achieving a B+ rating, I decided that the smart move would be to bank my points for the best prize possible. As soon as I made the selection, a new menu popped up.

Congratulations, you are making progress towards a new Title!

You may choose to display your PVP rating publicly while outside of battlegrounds for the remainder of the weekend.

Display Rating? (This option may be disabled through the menu at any time)

Yes

After a brief consideration, I failed to see a downside, so I selected yes. I didn’t notice any difference myself, but I did notice a rating appearing above a number of other Travelers in the inn. Not as many as I was expecting, however. Those without ratings looked jealously at those with them, and after a few minutes of eavesdropping I realized that the reason they were withholding their own ratings was because those ratings were quite low. The lowest I saw displayed was D+, although the majority of the Travelers in the room showed a rating of C+ or lower, making me one of the highest rated PVPers in the room.

Except for one table, which was seating six Travelers. One of them had a B rating, while the rest had ranked up to A. They were all about the same level as me, give or take. They were quite obviously scanning the crowd around them, and one of them noticed me, jostling the others to get their attention. A young woman left the table behind and made her way over to me.

“Hey kid. Grats on the rating! Are you part of a pre-made or did you earn that the hard way?” she asked.

“Pre-made?” I asked.

“I mean, did you join solo or were you part of a group?” she clarified.

“Oh. I guess I was solo. I didn’t know joining as a group was a possibility,” I admitted.

“It definitely is,” she informed me. “We’ve known that since battleground number uno. You know, the one in the mansion? Everyone who was already grouped up when that battleground started had the option to join as a group.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“I was there,” I said. “But I didn’t realize people could join in a party.”

“Joining solo gets you in faster,” she explained. “Because of how the whole reinforcement slash Morale system works. But if you’re part of a group when the battleground hits initially, you can choose to join as a party and you’ll be put in the same instance together. In the same location most of the time, we think. It’s the far better option, since it’s better to work with peeps you know and have worked with in the past than a bunch of strangers, who will probably have their heads up their you-know-whats.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I agreed. “I guess I probably would have known this if I’d have done more reading up on the forums, wouldn’t I?”

“Yeah, probably,” she agreed. “Anyway, you want to join with us? We’ve got about twenty-three players in our group, and we really stomped the other team last go around. We could use another [Archer].”

I considered the offer, then shrugged. “I guess I’m not seeing a downside.”

Toetality has invited you to join a Raid.

Experience and Quest Progress will be reduced.

Join together with other players to overcome challenges that are impossible to overcome alone?

Yes

I selected yes. The raid frames appeared off to the corner of my vision, out of the way unless I focused on them. A chorus of welcomes greeted me after Toetality introduced me with “He’s a kickass [Archer] who got a B+ rating solo.”

“Hello everyone,” I greeted back. “I’m looking forward to fighting alongside you.”

“Anyone else got any potential recruits?” Toetality asked the raid. “Remember, the info we have said that the minimum battleground size will be fifty members, so we can go right up to that limit.”

“Keeping my eye out,” someone said, “But so far everyone’s either scrubby or already in their own pre-made.”

I alerted the other me’s about what I had just learned regarding pre-mades using our chat system, then spent the next hour chatting with my new friends about the strategy we would employ in the next battleground.

An hour later, I stood atop a watchtower, lining up a shot. The arrow flew true, hitting the warrior in the leg, [Crippling] her for fifteen seconds, which allowed my mage ally to escape her harassment. I didn’t follow up on the same target, but rather took careful aim at a healer of the other team. My [Aimed Shot] caught the healer in the chest, as did the next and the next. The guaranteed critical damage was too much for him, and he burst into motes of red light.

The second battleground of the day was a king of the hill style melee. The control point was currently highlighted red, showing that my team was controlling it. The watchtower was on the western edge, barely within the contested zone. However, even if the tower had been outside the control point, I still would have been sent up it, as the vantage point was too valuable not to exploit for a class like mine.

I continued to harass the other team’s skirmishers, inflicting either [Crippling] debuffs or Critical Damage. I got few killing blows, but many assists as the enemy continued to assault our position in waves.

This continued until, unexpectedly, I suffered a critical blow from behind. An [Assassin] had stealthed up the watchtower to [Ambush] me. I suffered sixty percent damage before I could recover, but I [Backflipped] away from the attacker before he could finish me. I suffered an additional ten percent falling damage, despite landing on my feet, but one of my allied healers spotted my situation and tossed me a few spot heals.

“There’s a rat up in the tower,” I said into our group’s party chat. “I need help reclaiming it.”

“A little busy, Horace,” came the answer from Toetality. Horace was the alias I was using for my [Archer] self at present, since I wanted to PVP anonymously during the battlegrounds.

They were busy. While the [Assassin] had rousted me from my perch, a large group from Team Blue had approached. They were mostly melee players, and the core of our pre-made team was clumping up to roust them. I continued to do my part from the ground, lining up carefully [Aimed Shots] to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible.

A [Soldier] [Charged] me, and I [Back-flipped] away. Even as I flew through the air, I lined up my next arrow, which caught him in the ankle. The damage was less than optimal for that shot, but the [Cripple] that it inflicted would keep the [Soldier] hobbling for the next fifteen seconds. I was already lining up the next shot: I caught him in the chest. Right in the heart, dealing double critical damage for the [Anatomical Strike] on top of the critical damage from [Aimed Shot]. However, the follow up shot which would have brought him below ten percent health was rebuffed by a shield spell cast by a nearby [Cleric].

I changed my focus and began launching arrow after arrow at the [Cleric]. Surprisingly, rather than heal through the damage, the healer from Team Blue turned and fled the assault. If they would have stayed, they could have cleansed the soldier’s [Cripple] effect and healed through the damage I was causing. Instead, her failure to heal herself caused her death as the fourth of my arrows drove her down to zero health.

The Soldier had caught up to me at this point, but I [Backflipped] away again. [Backflip] was an expensive skill to use in terms of [Energy], draining nearly ten percent of that resource every time I used it, but it was also the only ability that used it aside from [Sprint]. If I used it too much I would have to wait for my [Energy] to regenerate, during which time I’d be vulnerable to melee Travelers. But there was no reason to be conservative with my [Energy] by allowing this [Soldier] to kill me.

I refreshed [Cripple] with an [Aimed Shot] to the Soldier’s thigh, then quickly finished him off with further [Aimed Shots]. I looked over just in time to see the [Assassin] who had ambushed me trying to take one of our healers out of the game, and I quickly lend my bow in our healer’s support. The healer simply stood still and took the [Assassin’s] damage, healing herself through it while I whittled her assailant’s own Health down from afar.

“Horace, we need you in that tower,” Toetality called over partychat. “Get back up there ASAP.”

“Working on it,” I said, and I sprinted back to my vantage point, slinging my [Bow of the Iron Quiver] over my shoulder to climb the ladder. A moment later, I was once more ensconced in the watchtower. An allied mage, not one who was part of the pre-made but a random member of Team Red who had joined us a few moments ago, joined me up there shortly, and the two of us spent the rest of the battleground working together.

The timer eventually ticked down to zero, with my team having controlled the hill for over eighty percent of the battle. While there were lesser control zones which had changed back and forth throughout the course of the battle, the primary zone was worth far more points than they were, and the final score was 18,252 points for team red versus 9,355 for team blue.