All the tiny forest creatures boasted the same buff. It was an interesting one, offering protection from being seen. According to the menus, if this ability was chosen, other players and monsters would need twenty percent higher Perception to spot Jay. The buff was reasonable, but he wasn’t particularly interested in becoming a stealth-based character. The ability might be valuable if he was ever forced into such a mission.
The wolf offered a passive increase to dodge chance. The marked boar provided a five percent increase in health, which was practical. A few extra health points could prevent him from losing a level. The creeping slime ability reduced physical damage but tripled damage from lightning-based sources. He wasn’t taking on a significant risk like that with psychotic lightning people like Taylor Lynn running around.
In the end, Jay settled on the only defensive option available from the dungeon bosses. The Maragon offered an ability called Maragon Blossoms. The ability worked very similarly to the final boss’ original ability.
For up to twenty seconds, he would become immune to all sources of damage. The amount of damage dealt would be stored, generating a certain number of ability stacks. After the duration, or when a maximum number of stacks were achieved, the vines would explode, creating Shards. The Shards would explode on the nearest enemy, causing stacks of poison.
He was surprised the ability boasted healing for him, as well. Poison generated by the tiny enemies would heal him the same as The Maragon. Each stack of poison would recover five percent of Jay’s health. The health recovered over ten seconds, instead of being instantaneous, which could prove invaluable. The maximum number of Shards generated was currently fifty. All told, he could regenerate over two times his health over ten seconds.
He was starting to see why someone tried to cut Monster Hunters out of the game.
He activated Synthesization without another moment’s hesitation. A tingling sensation crawled across his skin, which took him a moment to describe. It felt like vines brushing against his skin. The process pulled up his ability listings window when completed.
The text for Maragon Blossoms read identically to what was promised by the Bestiary system. In his other window, he saw a cooldown on synthesizing defensive abilities. Synthesization would be unable to select a new defensive ability for three days. The cooldown seemed a small sacrifice in exchange for a power that could change the scope of any fight.
Jay wondered how many monsters would be smart enough to avoid attacking the shell. There was an opportunity to bait large numbers of enemies into attacking the shell, causing him to fully heal while spewing destructive poison damage. He was stoked to try the new ability out in the field, imagining the power leveling he could do.
Verifying that he was still alone, he left Angela Kitt’s tomb. Grabbing his magical moss lamp, he hefted it to chest level and walked back through the dust clouds. The path back to his companions wasn’t challenging to navigate, so he found his way there quickly. Everyone seemed severe when he returned. He acknowledged the possibility he had taken too long, after all.
“What’s going on?” Jay asked. Ken, Jenny, and Taylor Lynn were all talking next to the fallen corpse of The Maragon. Lester was marked inside his game menus and furiously typing at his virtual keyboard.
“Just some problems on the surface, I guess,” Jenny said. “Apparently, those Demon player peeps ganked Lucille and Ichibad.”
“That means using underhanded tactics like numbers or surprise attacks to kill other players,” Taylor Lynn said sarcastically.
“I’m familiar with ganking. We used to leave people begging on the forums to leave them alone,” he said, rolling his eyes. “We can’t fight our way through those Demons.”
“Definitely not,” Jenny agreed. “Lester is trying to see if he can mobilize other guild members.”
“Other guild members?” Jay asked.
“Oh yeah, you missed it! We’ve been accepted to the guild on probationary status until level twenty. Once we level up, we’ll get the gear set and become full members. We just need to complete individual orientations with one of the members. Then, we’ll get the invite.”
“That’s pretty awesome.”
He was pleased with the opportunity. The guild’s support would be helpful, especially if Lester could mobilize the people to deal with threats from the Demon players. Seth and his crew seemed like they were interested in ruining the game for Elves. His party even alluded to in-game benefits from the player killing. Finding a way for Jay to kick them out of Elvish territory—at least for a while—was a high priority. Lester continued to furiously type away at his game menus.
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“Do we know who we’ll be meeting with yet?” Jay asked. When Jenny seemed confused, he added, “For the orientation meetings.”
“Yep,” Jenny said. “I think you’re going to be meeting with Lucille. Ken and Ichibad. I’ve got Lurian and Taylor Lynn has Kylar.”
He grimaced. Jay wasn’t overly thrilled by the prospect of Taylor Lynn hanging out with Kylar for an extended time. The Scoundrel seemed like the type of person to flirt with her shamelessly, which was funny, given his class name. Then again, he knew he shouldn’t care. He decided to try that.
“Makes sense,” Jay agreed.
Jenny perked up like she remembered something she had forgotten about. “Where did you end up going anyway?”
“Nowhere, really. There was just a long chain of extra rooms, but they were pretty sparse. It seemed like the developers forgot to finish it, honestly. I found a tomb but no chests or other points of interest.”
“Not even at the tomb?”
Jay shook his head. The others looked disappointed, which tempted him to tell them more about what was happening. The Angerine quest being a hidden quest made him want to keep it secret. He needed to verify a few things with Tumult Corp. and read his contract agreement. There was no shot he was going to risk Sarah’s treatments by spouting his mouth off about company secrets he accidentally stumbled into.
“Man,” Taylor Lynn said sadly. “We were hoping for some secret cache of Monster Hunter gear or something. Or some cool piece of Lore. Like a book for the guy with the Historian skill.”
“Trust me,” Jay said. “I’m disappointed, too.” He turned to Ken since the other player hadn’t spoken much since the party reunited. “Most of all, I hope we finally get some gear for Ken. Bad luck, man. What did you all think of the dungeon, anyway?”
Taylor Lynn spoke first, declaring, “Blasting lightning everywhere was pretty awesome.”
“I’m obsessed,” Jenny said. The Rune Cleric hefted her new staff, acquired earlier, onto her shoulder. “I can’t wait to test it out.”
“The dungeon was fine,” Ken said. “I didn’t get any gear, but I’ll happily spend some of Lester’s money on upgrades. His sword was a nice find. Wait a minute, you’re level seventeen?”
Ken looked at Jay’s game data, which Jay had completely forgotten about, and noticed the additional level disparity. The level was quickly going to give him away. Everyone could infer something happened while he explored the tomb area. His only saving grace was the general weirdness with the Monster Hunter class. The best thing to do was to lean on those problems until he could verify what information could be divulged.
“I’m level seventeen,” Jay said, trailing off to make it look like it was a revelation. Playing up the scene, he opened his game menus, looked through them for a while, and turned back to the new party. He tried his best to maintain a shocked look. “I have no idea how that happened.”
“How could you possibly not know?” Ken asked. “Shouldn’t you have gotten messages from the game? The system prompts informing you of experience gained? A level-up notification? Some sort of bug notification that you broke the game again?”
Jay latched onto the last piece, “If it has to do with the ongoing issues with the class, I might not have gotten the notification about where it came from. I guess that would make sense. But this dungeon was obviously designed for Monster Hunters. Maybe I got some kind of hidden completion bonus?”
“A completion bonus that didn’t show up until you explored the creepy Monster Hunter special tunnel with nothing in it?” Ken challenged rhetorically.
“Apparently. It could have been related to exploration.”
Jay shrugged, hoping the other player would let it go. Ken muttered something that Jay was only able to partially hear. Jay definitely noticed the words: special, little, and snowflake. He forced himself not to laugh, though he very much wanted to. He wondered if Ken might be first in line to switch to Monster Hunter at level 100.
The party continued to chat for an hour as Lester frantically typed away in his game system menus. They talked more about the dungeon, worked on some tactics for the next one, and made fun of Jay for being a special little snowflake. It was all good fun, and he was still flying high on the new ability gained from Synthesization. He couldn’t wait to see the look on their faces.
Finally, exiting his menus, Lester returned to the larger conversation, “Alright. I think we got something figured out. A few dungeon farming teams are finishing up runs. They’re going to form a hunting squad, and we’ll try to flush these guys out.”
“By the way,” Jay said, trying to follow up on Kylar’s original request now that he was in the guild. He ignored his fears about meeting with Taylor Lynn and how it made him want to hold off helping. “Is there any way you could take Kylar off dungeon farming duty? He wants to level to get involved in more player versus player action.”
Lester chuckled. “A bold ask. I’m guessing he didn’t tell you why he’s on dungeon farming duty?”
Jay shook his head.
“He stole a piece of loot during one of the leveling team runs. I assigned him dungeon farming duty as punishment for the debt owed to the guild. He’ll be back on a leveling team once he pays the item off.”
“Kylar ninja looted a sword?” Jenny asked, horrified.
“No,” Lester said, eyeing the squirrel on Jay’s shoulder. “He stole a pet hedgehog that dropped from a final boss in another dungeon.”
The whole party fell into a fit of raucous laughter.
With everyone firmly in a good mood and Jay’s strange leveling temporarily forgotten, the party finished their discussion of tactics. They made some decisions about what kind of gear to acquire in town. They continued to chat happily among themselves, bonding as a party, until Lester got the notification from his guild teams. He launched into the plan, making sure everyone was prepared.
“Alright, so four dungeon teams are converging on our area. The primary goal here is to take those players down. It should take them a while to find another way back into Elvish territory. Hopefully, it gives us time to investigate the fake quests and learn more about how they’re getting into our territory.”
“So we’re bait?” Jay asked.
“We’re bait,” Lester confirmed.
The party left the dungeon, backtracking their initial steps. They were expecting the Demon players to be waiting for them outside of the dungeon. They didn’t expect all five players to be waiting inside the inner cave—right by the lever—standing on a pile of slain Fishmongers.