Chapter 21: At the Oasis

The party soon passed their entrance tunnel and continued exploring the mine. As they descended deeper the mine changed. The rotting wood was completely missing in some locations and some of the side tunnels had completely collapsed. The zombies were further decayed, some of their skin completely dried out increasing their defense even more than it had been previously.

It was exploring a partially collapsed side tunnel that the group’s vigilance paid off. Riley was about to squeeze through to the other side when Casey called for him to freeze. Riley stopped moving instantly, his foot halfway in the air.

Looking carefully where Casey indicated Riley saw the glint of a tripwire in the green torchlight. He followed the triggering mechanism and saw embedded in the ceiling a giant axe ready to swing down and cleave him in half. With trying to navigate through the partially collapsed tunnel Riley would have had no chance to dodge the trap. He put his foot down carefully, retreating from the trapped hall.

The group retreated together, and Heather triggered the trap with a well-placed Mana Bolt. Casey took the lead in exploring the rest of the tunnel but didn’t find any loot. The group was already careful but now there was an edge to that care. They had to jump over a pitfall trap and avoided exploring another side tunnel that had some suspiciously loose looking rocks for a ceiling.

The enemies too started getting craftier. Soon they were fighting multiple zombies at once. They were happy to gang up on Riley with one of the Zombie’s trying to wrestle his shield away from him while the other tried to bite him. Fortunately, his Rock Armor was thick enough that they couldn’t get their teeth around him, but Riley had to resummon the armor twice more to keep up with all the damage it was taking.

It was frustrating that Riley was forced to keep resummoning his whole armor when only a single leg or arm was shattered. But he needed the protection, especially against the elite foes.

The worst fight the group got into was when a second pair of Zombies dropped down from where they were hiding in the ceiling and attacked the group from behind. Scott went down and had to wrestle with one of the Zombies while Nermit and Heather took glancing blows from the other. Casey left Riley to help with the other two and without the support of his party Riley felt himself being overwhelmed. He was forced to resort to kiting the two Zombies backwards up the tunnel, dropping and resummoning his Rock Armor partway through the fight.

The Risky move earned him a shattered knee from a wild swipe and Riley collapsed to the ground. Dr. Funk came to Riley’s rescue jumping on the back of one of the Zombies while Riley pulled out his spare dagger for the first time and used it to stab the zombie on top of him as fast as he could. He could feel his Lingering Leech ability pull more healing energy from the zombie on top of him but none of that was going to heal his leg, it was all being used to keep the rest of him whole as the zombie used its leverage to lay into Riley, each attack breaking his bones through his Rock Armor. Riley cried out in pain.

Riley, desperate, reached deep into himself for his healing power willing it to grab more. He needed more. Something snapped and with his next attack Riley felt a flood of energy reach him. His healing was able to keep up with the damage being done to him, but Riley’s world was one of pain. All he knew was that he had to keep on stabbing. He stabbed until the Zombie collapsed on top of him.

Riley still would have kept going but he was no longer receiving any of the healing power from the monster and that was what broke Riley out of his funk.

Despite only being able to stab a half inch into the Zombie something had killed it. The dried skin, once as hard as steel, felt flaky and delicate to Riley’s hands as he pushed the zombie off of himself. It seemed like he had managed to drain whatever had been animating the undead creature.

The rest of the group hadn’t fared much better than Riley. Scott had kept spraying the zombie on top of him with his Spore Breath and Nermit had kept Scott alive until the Zombie was half dissolved and stopped moving.

Heather and Casey did better with their first zombie despite Heather’s injury. But they were forced to assist Dr. Funk with keeping the second Zombie from rejoining Riley’s desperate struggle.

Once the fight was over the group collectively decided to call it a night. It was hard to tell time in the mine but it had already been getting late in the day when they found the Porc encampment. The party retreated back to the waterfall and the idyllic glen.

They washed themselves and their armor before going to bed this time and set up a proper watch rotation.

Riley had first watch and he spent the time staring at the stars. He had never been into astrology, so he wasn’t sure where any constellations were, or if they were even the same in real life as they were in the games he played. It had always been just another background set to him before. It didn’t seem so inconsequential anymore.

The virtual star scapes couldn’t hold a candle to the beauty of the real thing. There was no designer behind the beauty of the stars above him. Just the basic laws of physics painting the night sky with something truly sublime.

His mind wandered back to the last few days. Monsters and magic were real. He was stronger than he had ever been. Every fight wasn’t just a number sent to the queue hoping he had priority that day in the DAQ. This was all very real, and Riley’s understanding of basic physics had been shattered. But it didn’t often feel that way as it had been shattered into a familiar pattern.

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But in this quiet moment, staring at the stars, Riley was feeling the consequences of the change in his world view. He pulled up his ability notification, wanting to look at it again.

Lingering Leech

Damaging creatures of flesh and blood will heal yourself for a minor amount of the damage dealt. The healing energy can be stored for a short amount of time based on your Spirit attribute.

It was a one-word difference. “Small” to “minor.” The words meant the same thing to Riley, but the system considered them very differently. He had felt the change in the power he was able to pull from the Zombie.

The Zombie’s death had also confirmed a suspicion that he had had. The Lingering Leech ability did its own separate damage to the enemy with whatever it pulled from them. There was no way Riley’s tiny stabs would have killed the Zombie otherwise. The creatures didn’t bleed and none of Riley’s attacks had hit anything vital.

He idly wondered if there was a hidden Hit Points stat as well and if so what his would be at. Was 100 a lot, or just the starting amount?

The sound of boots scuffing the rock broke Riley from his reverie, and he turned his head to see Heather approaching. She laid down on the bed of moss next to him. Riley could tell that she wanted to say something so he kept quiet, content to sit in the silence and she worked up her courage.

“You’re pretty incredible, you know?” Heather started. Riley glanced at her, her long black hair was spread in a halo around her, the moonlight shining down on her gave her an ethereal quality. He turned his gaze back to the sky so it wouldn’t look like he had been staring.

“Yeah, sure I am miss ‘full-cleared-the- tria-of-the-commander,’” Riley scoffed.

Heather shook her head and turned her head to him; Riley met her piercing yellow-green eyes. “You do that a lot you know? Minimize your own accomplishments.’

Riley averted his gaze, turning back to the stars. “I don’t think I’ve done anything worth mentioning,” Riley admitted.

“See? You’re doing it again.” Heather let out a deep sigh and turned back to stars. “You know I always used to played games with low pain sensitivity thresholds. Could barely feel anything. When that zombie got me today, I was almost floored. I pushed through because I’m awesome, of course, but it made me think.

“How do you do it? How do you handle the pain? How can you stand there in front of the group getting hit and healed over and over again and then get up to do it all over again the next fight? That takes something special, I think.”

“I don’t know. I went through a phase where I used to play a lot of hardcore games. No HUDs, no skills, one life, and no pain reduction at all. It was just you and your sword against the world.” Riley paused; he could feel a lump forming in his throat. Heather let him collect himself. “I was in a dark place at the time and eventually I realized that there was no point doing what I was doing. I was just torturing myself for nothing. Well, I guess not nothing now,” Riley said wryly. “It’s nothing special though. A lot of people played those kinds of games and most of them were a lot better at it than me.”

From the corner of his eye Riley could see Heather shaking her head. “And when you stepped in to fight those Amanita Men in the tree cave?” Riley snorted at the reference to his oral blunder. “One good hit and you would have been dead.” Heather paused, as if unsure if she wanted to go on, then, in a whisper, she added “You almost were.”

“Well, what else could I do? We needed the points to heal Nermit and we were trapped.”

“You could have told me to stuff it and flee into the Trial. You could have let the highest-level person in our party, Casey, tank them. But you didn’t even hesitate. You threw yourself into mortal danger on my orders.”

Heather paused as she collected her thoughts. The earthy smell of moss and the gentle roar of the waterfall played background to their conversation. Riley saw Dr. Funk prowling behind Heather, a mouse in their mouth.

“I was a guild leader,” Heather said, bringing Riley’s attention back to her. “Before the tutorial, I mean, and I was good at it. Every time new content was released, I relished theory crafting the boss fights. Finding counters, building raid groups, and using every tiny thing to our advantage. We were the first guild on our server to kill Theranos the Swindler. I felt higher than I had ever felt before.

“I thrived there, or at least I thought I did. But soon after everything fell apart. The other guild leaders talked about me behind my back, they said I was cold and distant. They threw parties I wasn’t invited to and eventually kicked me out.” Heather seemed to shrink into herself at the admittance, her arms hugging herself. “I stopped playing MMOs after that.”

“Did they ever get another server first kill?” Riley asked once he was sure she wasn’t going to add any more.

“No,” she smiled to herself at that. “No, they didn’t. But what does that matter? You guys, you all listen to me, and it scares me. What if I make the wrong call?”

“So what?”

“Huh?”

“So, what if you make the wrong call? It’s not like any of us know what we’re doing any more than you do.” Riley shook his head, “It’s possible to make no mistakes and still fail, so why worry about it?”

Heather was quiet for a moment as she considered, “I don’t think I can do that. Not worry I mean.”

“Yeah, mean neither,” Riley admitted. “Earlier, you asked how I could do it, stand in front of the group over and over again? I do it out of fear.” Riley took a deep breath, pointedly avoiding Heather’s questing eyes. “The tank is the second most important person in any party, just below a decent healer. Without a tank monsters can get to the back line and do devastating damage. The entire group falls apart. So, everyone in a party works to enable the tank, to keep them alive. That’s how I do it. Because I trust you guys are doing everything you can to keep me alive. It’s a bit selfish, I know.”

Heather let out a chuckle, “well not so much today,” her amusement clear in her voice.

“There are some flaws in the theory,” Riley said, an answering smile on his face.

They both continued to stare at the stars, the conversation entering a lull. After a few minutes Heather broke the silence. “Hey Riley,”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Dr. Funk, finished with his late-night meal, walked in between Riley and Heather. He gave each of them a tentative sniff, though retreated from Heather’s questing hand, before curling into a little ball and falling asleep.

Heather yawned, her eyelids fluttering closed as she tried to fight her exhaustion.

“You know, there’s still some time left before your watch is up.”

“Mm? Oh, then wake me when it's my turn,” Heather gave in and closed her eyes. Within a minute her breathing turned even, and she was asleep. Riley turned his gaze back to the stars.