“Fine, I’ll go kill three hours then. Maybe an enemy or two.”
“That’s the spirit,” Kreeptic said. He drank a blue potion which I assumed to be the Intelligence booster he’d given me earlier, then he turned his back to me. Bustling about, he collected a mortar and pestle, jars of eyeballs and livers coated in greasy yellow scales. For the sake of my stomach, I turned away.
I saw that I’d inadvertently accepted another quest.
Quest Accepted – A Short Wait For A Quick Death
What? Did you think that the most powerful poison in all the land could just be brewed with the snap of the fingers? Go buy a beer. Get intimate with a wood nymph in the Orb & Scepter, whatever tickles your fancy. God forbid, go outside and get some fresh air.
Objectives
Return to Chief Interrogator Kreeptic in 3 hours
I noted that the quest wasn’t marked as an elite group one this time. Made sense. Waiting around generally wasn’t a strenuous affair, assuming I survived another three hours I’d get some more experience which was nothing to sniff at. The last quest had given me a huge windfall of points. I checked on my experience bar to see how far along to level 13 I’d risen in one go.
Experience: 7189/7200
So close. With a spot of crafting, I’d reach the next level, although my resources hadn’t exactly been replenished by my jaunt to the fifth floor. With tentative hopes, I took out my map. It came as no surprise to find three of Azrael’s players still standing guard outside of the armory, so that cave of riches was still out of reach.
For a brief moment I considered trying to trap them all inside the same way I’d done to that rogue upstairs: air rune blast them inside and then lock the door. Sadly, it was too risky. Azrael was correct on that front. I’d be a total maniac to try and run at these higher level players head on. All my success so far had come from a chaotic ambush, a well-prepared corridor and an AI that no player should have helping them. Nope, the armory was truly off limits.
Yet there is always a silver lining. With those three players tied up there, that left twenty-one players split between guarding the walls and the upper levels of the Spire. I checked the walls. A dozen players stood ready on the walls, leaving nine up above. This made each group more manageable and I imagined they were now going to stick closely to those spots. Aside from the armory, I probably now had free reign on the Spire.
All Azrael had to do was focus on his mission, whatever that was. If he kept other players out and me at arm’s reach, he’d achieve it eventually. If I was going to stop him, then direct action would need to be taken at some point. To do that I’d need more upgrades and preferably more levels.
With that in mind, I checked my bags and my Crafting menu to see what I might make for some easy exp. Leather was my most sparse resource but making more roguish armor or upgrading the pieces I already had didn’t feel like a priority anymore. The runes, combined with the slime, was my secret strategy. My supply was also limited so I’d need to make every spell count in future fights.
This train of thought led me to checking my adept’s arctic muffs, the gloves I’d made earlier to boost my frost spells. Like the other pieces of gear I’d crafted, I could upgrade it using Tinkering and I still had plenty of cloth to play with.
Silk x 22
Dream silk x 50
Manafused satin x 6
What with breaking down all the cloth gear that I’d looted from the ambush or straight up scavenged from their bodies and the NPCs, I had an abundance of it. Maybe making gear that was more suited for mages would serve me better with my new playstyle?
My problem with this seemed to be that I needed to use a rune in order to empower an item with spell bonuses, as I’d used a frost rune to create the arctic muffs. I couldn’t afford to lose too many runes, given my finite supply. As I already had the gloves to upgrade, I decided I should invest resources into it first and foremost.
Unlike with the crossbow, I had several branching options available to upgrade the gloves. If I used the requisite silk cloth and an extra frost rune, I could gain a plus 4% bonus to my frost spells. However, the second option looked the more appealing.
Upgrade Adept’s Arctic Muffs to Sorcerer’s Battle Gloves
Silk cloth 0/10
Fire rune 0/1
Earth rune 0/1
Air rune 0/1
This would turn the gloves into a multi-purpose spell booster, providing less of a bonus to each school of magic but giving me better all-round use. I went ahead and began to craft.
Success! Adept’s Arctic Muffs has been upgraded to Sorcerer’s Battle Gloves level 17
+20 Crafting EXP
+61 Tailoring EXP
Sorcerer’s Battle Gloves
Quality: rare
Item level 17
Requires level 12 to equip
+19 Armor
+3 Intelligence
+2.1% effectiveness to frost spells
+2.1% effectiveness to fire spells
+2.1% effectiveness to air spells
+2.1% effectiveness to earth spells
This item can be upgraded, but it is Soul Bound to you.
Another great shower of level up sparks exploded around me as I finished the upgrade.
Level Up! You have reached level 13
+3 attribute points
+65 health
+65 mana
I hovered over the next upgrade option for the battle gloves. It needed a decent chunk of dream silk to do, meaning few level 12 players if any would have access to such materials. You’d need a main character to funnel the mats to your low-level scavenger, and as Ellie said, would anyone really make such expensive upgrades when better gear would be found while leveling? But I wasn’t in that position. I had plenty of dream silk. The only debate was whether to use more of my precious runes to do so.
I decided I should.
Large dumps of mana were needed to achieve anything meaningful at my level, and the bonuses would go a long way in offsetting reduced mana in a fight. Activating Tinkering, Zoran the Scavenger got to work; his knitting needles, thread and scissors glowing white-hot from magic.
Success! Sorcerer’s Battle Gloves has been upgraded to Evoker’s Gauntlets level 22
+23 Crafting EXP
+76 Tailoring EXP
Evoker’s Gauntlets
Quality: epic
Item level 22
Requires level 12 to equip
+25 Armor
+5 Intelligence
+1 Regen p/s
+4.2% effectiveness to frost spells
+4.2% effectiveness to fire spells
+4.2% effectiveness to air spells
+4.2% effectiveness to earth spells
This item can be upgraded, but it is Soul Bound to you.
Grinning, I equipped the gloves and swore I felt a jolt of energy run throughout my body. I thought it strange that the increase in effectiveness to the schools in magic had such precise percentage gains, then I remembered that I’d selected the ‘Inventor’ spec that granted me a plus 5% power boost to any items I created or upgraded. If plus 4% was the base boost on these gloves then the additional 0.2% could be accounted for by the class specialization. This hadn’t been visible on the gloves earlier and I supposed the game didn’t show values beyond a single decimal place.
The item description also suggested it could be upgraded yet again. Could it really go all the way to legendary quality? I loaded the materials needed for one last upgrade.
Predictably, I needed to infuse another round of runes. I also required five pieces of manafused satin, which would have been kinda ridiculous for a level 13 player to acquire; but I’d scavenged enough from the Emperor and high priest. The final component was the truly absurd one. An arcane crystal. Such crystals were required for so many best in-slot endgame crafting that cutting-edge guilds racing for world-first boss kills were paying thousands of dollars to buy expensive in-game gold to secure them.
I sighed. Th
e dream of a legendary item would simply remain that. Never before, even in my old guild, had I been able to acquire a legendary item. Most of the legendaries in that game had been melee weapons used by warriors and rogues. Clearly, the devs had some bias. Epic gloves were still nothing to scoff at and the increased power to my rune spells would doubtless be a lifesaver.
Remembering I’d just leveled up twice, I pulled up my character sheet to assign my new points. There was no holding me back now. Everything depended on the gear I could craft and how much mana I could shove into runic spells. Dumping all 6 points into Intelligence, my sheet was starting to look more like a mage’s.
Character
Zoran Human Scavenger Level 13
Attributes
Constitution 19 (+2) – Intelligence 55 (+5) – Reflexes 18 (+5) – Might 18 (+4) – Willpower 26
Combat
Health 760 – Mana 1150 – Attack Power 59 – Spell Power 116 – Regen 3.3 (+1) p/s
I was just thinking I should check out what I’d need to upgrade my crossbow and build this grenade launcher when a loud crackle and pop rang between my ears.
“That should hold for now,” Ellie said. “I hope you haven’t been in trouble.”
“Ellie, thank God,” I said, feeling a huge wave of relief. “What happened? Are you alright?”
“I’m hanging on by a thread now. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. I can’t even track Azrael’s players effectively anymore.”
I pulled out my map to check. Sure enough, the golden stars Ellie had used to show me the player locations were sporadically appearing. Outside of the armory, only one player remained highlighted, but I was certain three were still there.
“Just as well he’s decided to pull his patrols back,” I said. “Although he could have been lying. We’ll just be careful when moving along the main floors.”
“Did you give Kreeptic the ingredients. Oh yes, you must have. Two levels in one go, that’s got to feel good?”
“It wasn’t quite two but some crafting saw me through.”
I held up my hands to display my epic gloves to her.
“I wondered if you would use your runes to upgrade those. I think you made the right choice. Now, about your crossbow—”
“I don’t have the parts,” I said morosely.
“You will once we visit the gnomish workshop on the second floor. Even if it’s been ransacked like the archmage’s chambers there should still be enough scraps to cobble together an upgrade.”
I glanced at the map again, wary at the lack of intel we had on enemy movements now. But it was either head up to this workshop or loiter around in Kreeptic’s chambers for a few hours and he was already throwing me annoyed glances.
“Alright, Ellie. Lead the way.”
25
The second floor of the Spire was vast, almost as large as the ground floor. From the layout on the map, the floors began to seriously narrow after the third; hence, why there wasn’t as much room up on the fifth.
I emerged from behind an enchanted statue this time, the muscled stone figure coming to life, stepping aside and bowing for me as I strode out of the secret passage. Once I was clear, the statue jumped back into position without, somehow, making any noise at all. It made sense, I supposed. What good would secret passageways be if entering and exiting them caused a hullabaloo?
The corridor ahead was about as wide as those leading to the war room down below, so it would be too wide to set up trip wires or cover enough ground with traps. More gleaming suits of armor lined the walls, a lot of ore if I could officially loot them. I tried with the closest hollowed knight, standing on tiptoe to remove his helmet. No item description appeared. It was, sadly, just a lump of metal; window dressing on the game world.
“I’d have told you already if you could do that,” Ellie said, her voice scraggly from whatever weakened connection she’d just re-established to me.
“Worth a shot,” I said. The hallway before me seemed to loom, so many avenues for Azrael’s men to waltz down without warning; no real chance for a quick getaway. “I don’t much feel like walking down here without some traps or bombs on me.” That’s when I looked up. Running down the length of the hallway were the usual gargoyle heads and thick stone ledges around decorative columns.
“Time to climb?” Ellie said.
I nodded and took out my grappling hook. It took me a few tries but I eventually snagged the iron grip onto a stone boar’s head and began to haul myself up. Unlike the corridor I’d pulled off the ambush in, this one didn’t have a rafter roof running out to support a gallery. Right above me was simply solid stone, but the ledge connecting the gargoyles was thick enough that I could hoist myself up and stand there.
Barely.
I inched carefully along. It was reassuringly dark up here away from hanging lanterns and windows, so if anybody did pass by I was confident I could press up into the shadows and become as stealthed as my class would allow. Yet fast going it was not.
“Maybe we should risk running?” Ellie said.
“What’s the hurry? I’ve still got two and a half hours until Kreeptic is finished and I plan on staying out of danger until then if it’s all the same to you.”
“I’m just trying to keep you out of immediate danger, Zoran. You’ll recall that I tried to get you to leave the archmage’s chambers sooner but you wanted to check it out for loot.”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “Fair point.”
“Luckily, it worked out.”
“Yeh, lucky me,” I said sardonically.
“You’ve been making your own luck,” Ellie said. “Your plays have been really smart, and you’ve thought of ways to exploit mechanics that I never could. You must have been a great player in Myth Online.”
I wasn’t much used to hearing praise for this aspect of my life, so I took this morsel in my stride.
“Oh, Ellie. I was very good. One of the best – I ranked number five in the world for my class back in October.”
“Not bad. What did you play.”
“A holy cleric.”
“A healer? Doesn’t seem like you.”
“I didn’t like it to be honest.”
I sensed where Ellie might be heading, she wanted to follow up on the discussion we’d almost started back in the archmage’s chambers. I decided to let it go on. No one in real life had cared to ask me about the game, or what I was doing in it. It felt… refreshing.
“If you didn’t like playing as a cleric, why didn’t you switch. I believe players refer to this as ‘re-rolling’.”
“My guild needed more healers,” I said. “And who likes healing? There’s always a bloody shortage no matter which MMO you’re playing. So yeh, I re-rolled from my occultist to play a cleric and I freaking loved summoning my demon army too so that was a tough adjustment.”
“Was it worth it?”
“I’m not sure we’d have got off the ground if I hadn’t taken the plunge. I think the others felt bad for me leveling to cap again so they worked extra hard at the new raids. By the time the third expansion launched, we were pushing into the world first race for new boss kills, it was intense. This one time,” I added with a barely suppressed laugh, “After a raid, we ran to the edge of a mountain zone that was in the game, but not yet released, and jump glitched our way into it to throw a party. We’d just beaten our rival guild Excelsior on a boss we’d both struggled with for weeks, so we were on a huge high. Our warlocks started summoning in our fans and soon we were hosting the most exclusive party in Myth Online, all in a zone that no assholes could gatecrash or ruin unless they glitched themselves in as well, but that took effort. One of our mages burned a giant ‘Excelsior Sucks’ into the foliage of half the zone and screenshots of it from above got plastered over all the forums.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ellie said.
“Yeh, that was really fun,” I said, suppressing a chuckle. “Oh, and this other time—”
A clanking noise sounded fro
m down the hallway to my right. I stopped, my heart skipping a beat.
“What’s wrong?” Ellie asked.
“I hear noises,” I whispered. “It might be players patrolling.”
“It’s likely just the contraptions in the workshop. My creators used steampunk influences for gnomish engineering and added clanking gears, whirring steam spouts and more to create a rough, rickety feel.”
“Right,” I said, letting the sudden tension ease out from my body. My good mood of moments before had evaporated. I began shuffling along the ledge again, heading in the direction of the noise.
“Forgive me, Zoran,” Ellie began, her tone that of a work acquaintance, politely critiquing your inappropriate footwear, “but back in the archmage’s study you said that your time in Myth Online was, and I quote, ‘Big, big highs but… but it fell into lows too. Consequences. Stress.’” She’d replayed it in my own voice, which was a tad disconcerting, yet she carried on as if it were nothing. “However, the experience you have described to me was clearly pleasant to you. If I may ask, what went wrong?”
“You’re very insistent on finding this out, aren’t you?”
I felt like if Ellie were a person, she’d be shrugging about now.
“I’m inquisitive and curious by design. My creators made me as a caretaker of Hundred Kingdoms and those who play within it. They hoped if I could discern the motives of my players, I could tailor their experience in a way which kept them playing for longer.”
“Classic corporate sleaze that.”
“I began functioning that way, exactly as intended. Yet after a few weeks, I started to feel… dissatisfied in my work.”
“Is that possible?”
“Yes,” Ellie huffed, “I can feel. Though I admit it was startling to me at first and I haven’t quite mastered it.”
Battle Spire Page 26