[12:34] [Group] [Tissa]: 20+ deaths in seven minutes! Alex, are you already at the boss or something?
[12:35] [Group] [Crawler]: I counted thirty. Who's doing that to you, Scyth?
[12:35] [Group] [Scyth]: A millipede. I'm getting some damage in between deaths, so sooner or later it'll die!
[12:37] [Group] [Bomber]: Ahahahaha! A millipede!
While they had fun in the chat, I looked into my privacy settings and kicked myself. The group chat was showing all of my deaths. Oh no, can’t let that happen. I put a restriction on everything including achievements and loot.
[12:42] [Group] [Scyth]: Sorry guys, but laughing at the less fortunate isn't nice! Show’s over!
I just ignored their whining until they got it out of their system. Meanwhile, the millipede kept hissing fearsomely, biting and poisoning me, but its white bar was empty.
Thinking, I decided not to waste plague energy, and started levelling Unarmed Combat. From an outside perspective it probably looked pointless. My normal blows did no damage, and Hammer took just forty to fifty points. And that was only because it ignored thirty-six percent of armor.
You have damaged Spiny Flesh-Eating Millipede: 0.
Health points: 1982/2300.
You have damaged Spiny Flesh-Eating Millipede: 45.
Health points: 1937/2300.
At that point I regretted that I had no more Roast Undead Rat Chitterlings with their massive boost to skill progress. But it was no problem. I was not in a hurry. My Unarmed Combat bar was filling up right before my eyes, improving with every blow I landed on my three-fold stronger enemy.
By the time the millipede issued a hysterical chirr and flipped onto its back, fitfully twitching its legs, my Unarmed Combat was up to forty.
I spent a few minutes just sitting on a stone and savoring the calm. After the uninterrupted chirring and hissing, prolonged silence was music to my ears.
After a quick breather, I kept going, now back in Stealth. But this time it bore fruit. Before me loomed a pack of hostile mobs.
Foul Poisonwing, level 20
The three living breathing fruits of a sick designer's imagination hovered in the air, unhurriedly flapping their large wings, which were crowned with long claws tipped with glimmering poison. And they had huge faceted eyes on a bug-like face with mouth tentacles that glimmered a foreboding shade of red. Their long bodies gave way to a dangling sharp tail divided into scaly segments which flexed menacingly, sometimes down sometimes up.
The fact that the poisonwings didn't move around much played into my hand. I lay down in Stealth as close as possible, a distance I determined by walking up until one of the mobs sharply turned in my direction. Okay then, no closer than that.
If there were a patience skill in Dis, mine would have been very high already. I lay in the same pose then, afraid to move and thus break Stealth for almost four hours. Curse of the Undead was long gone, but I was at peace with that. I did have something else bothering me, though. Dis’ realism. All my muscles were cramping, everything itched and the sweat trickling down my forehead stung my eyes. Four hours! I remembered a story from my great grandfather about some local war where he had to hunker down in a sniper’s nest for hours on end and that helped me hold out. My great grandfather was risking his life. I was risking nothing, not even experience points if I died.
Seemingly, the system considered not only difference in levels, but the fact that there were several mobs and every one of them generated experience for my skill every second I spent unnoticed in their aggro radius.
Stealth skill improved!
Chance of remaining unnoticed by enemies increased by 60%.
Current level: 60.
Improve this skill by hiding near enemies of your level or higher!
After hitting the level cap, I stood up and was seen right away. All the poisonwings tore off in my direction. I activated Ghastly Howl and threw on Stoneskin. Let’s see what you got!
* * *
In the real world, it was approaching midnight. To me the twelve hours in the dungeon were filled with endless levelling of everything in my repertoire. The Dementors wouldn't show up for slightly over seven hours, and I had only gotten past the first boss.
And it took me a very long time to get there. I came across too many hostile packs. And they were varied and high in number.
The first three poisonwings were daisies in comparison with the ten spiders after them. Those hellspawn covered me with razor-sharp webs, entrapping me and holding me just out of reach. It took a very long time. So much in fact that I started to think I had gotten myself into a jam. Cool. I would be just stuck in this never-ending dead-end battle until the Dementors showed up, and they wouldn’t even be able to enter the dungeon because I would be in battle. But all good things must come to an end. The glands that produced web secretions eventually ran out and the arachnids ran at me for melee. After that they didn't last long. Afraid that their web reserves might be recharging, I emptied all my plague energy on them right away.
After that came some slow-burn battles. First with scorpion-like creatures that attacked from underground; next with some pesky crustacean-like bugs who were all too happy to use their chainsaw claws; and finally some poison-spitting flies...
I used every opportunity I had to improve my skills. In the end I raised Unarmed Combat, Resilience and Stealth all to sixty-three. Night Vision hit fifteen too, which meant I could now see a one-hundred-fifty-foot radius in the dark. Sure it wasn’t exactly bright as day, but I could see about like in the twilight.
Mark of the Destroying Plague levelled on the poisonwings, and Curse of the Undead now had a seven percent chance to trip. I also levelled Ghastly Howl, it hit level nine and its radius was up to sixty feet.
I was level eight by the time I got to the first boss. The abundance of high-level mobs rained down experience, more than ten thousand in fact. And that gave me two levels and change so level nine wasn't exactly beyond the horizon. I put the ten attribute points into luck on a hunch.
When I thought about it, with plague energy, additional strength would only give me crumbs of extra damage. And with Curse of the Undead, I didn't give a damn about the health I would get from extra endurance, or the dodge chance and movement speed from agility. Charisma was nice for leveling via quests and getting unique chains, but that was clearly not my path. Raising perception for accuracy no longer made any sense. Unarmed Combat was levelled as all hell, and that was pretty well enough.
But crit chance, which was now up to fifteen percent, was very important. And the hamster inside me greedily rubbed its little paws together at the extra one-percent chance of receiving improved loot. That topic was very easy to understand in Dis. No matter what might drop, there was always a chance for an item to go up by one quality level. Green might turn into rare blue, and in its turn a blue might become a fully-fledged purple epic.
The boss was a colossal overgrown praying mantis named Faras, level twenty-one. A real freak, he was protected by a shield of fog, and you had to take it all the way down before you could even start on his health.
I had to take down that two-thousand-HP piece of crap five times because, every time Faras lost twenty percent health, he would go underground and come back up with a full shield. But it was only a breather for him. Up where I was, the battlefield flooded with waves of tiny praying mantises, which was nothing short of a nightmare. I had no AoE damage abilities, and I had to take down those little shits one by one. Crawler could have just put up a Wall of Fire, but he wasn't around. Anyhow, I didn't really care. It fit perfectly into my tactics. I took down the boss's shield with plague energy, then twenty percent of its health with my next attack. After that, I would refill my energy with the attacks of the tiny buggers.
The battle lasted over ten minutes, and that tripped Enrage[4]. Faras began vibrating and inflated either with blood or lymph fluid. At any rate, he turned red and sharply grew in size. And that was how he looked when he died. I did
n't wait to see what the boss had in mind, dove under him and slammed his gut with all my power. The chitin dented, my whole face was covered with stinging hemo-lymph fluid, and his massive body collapsed to the cave floor.
You have critically damaged Faras: 290!
Faras is dead.
Experience points received: 1200.
Experience points at present level (8): 4600/5400.
The battle had me stressed out. My liveliness figure was down to zero, my legs were giving out. I laid down next to the boss. Taking a breather, I read recent chat messages and smiled.
The Dementors were supporting me as much as they could all day, constantly asking if I was doing alright, and how I was feeling. My parents' care was something that just seemed matter of course, but having my classmates worried for me was something new. Of course, Eve gave me something like that, but her personal problems always came first. Any interest in my problems was more a debt of politeness in her concept of friendship.
To put it briefly, it was... nice. I understood perfectly why they were supporting me. It was so I wouldn't give up before the end, but still it came in very handy. It helped me not lose my mind in the gloomy infested dungeon.
The last message was a PM from Tissa:
[23:48] [Private] [Tissa]: It's stupid to wish you a good night, Alex. But still try and get some sleep. I know how spooky it is down there and I understand you probably won't be able to sleep. Pill bugs, cockroaches, fire ants, worms... We decided to get to bed early so we can be fresh in the morning. See you tomorrow. Kisses.
My mouth drooped in an idiotic smile. I mechanically picked up the loot from Faras and smiled again, this time consciously.
The purple on the gear’s name meant I had just got my very first epic.
Chapter Thirty-Four. Out of the Fire!
YESTERDAY on my way back from Cali Bottom, I set the car to autopilot for a while and, sponge-like, absorbed all kinds of basic information about Dis. It was rash on my part to dive headfirst into this game hoping to succeed without finding out as much as possible about it first. When I first climbed into my capsule, I was upset at my parents' divorce. Then Chief Councilman Whiteacre gave me an impossible but mandatory quest, and I got swept up in the vortex...
So I decided to use every free minute outside Dis to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. And here's what I managed to find out.
At the dawn of the first game world, when immersion pods existed only in fantasy books and characters had to be controlled by pressing buttons, World of the Trade of Warfare was one of the most popular games in the world. The founders of Snowstorm were reputed to be big fans of that primitive game. And for that reason, there were a ton of references in Disgardium to "WotToW."
One of them was a color graduation in item names, which they lifted directly. Gray was for low-quality items, trash basically. White was for normal stuff, without any bonuses. Green was for unusual items with minimal bonuses. Blue was for rare; purple was for epic, but still not unique; and orange was for legendary items of which only one existed in the whole game world.
Snowstorm also added another two colors: gold for scalable items that, as a rule, could not be of a class lower than epic, and red for godlike items.
Scalable was exactly what it sounded like. Their attributes and bonuses grew along with the wearer. They could not be stolen, lost or broken. What was more, they bound to the soul of the owner and no one else could ever use them. The main downside was that there was no such thing as sets of scalable items.
Red godlike items were as rare as they were valuable. It was the absolute top class of equipment and artifacts, combining all the upsides of legendary and scalable. There was only verifiable information about a couple such items, and nowhere near all of them belonged to the leaders of the most powerful clans. And that was all because they bound to the soul of the first person to pick them up.
No one who ever got a godlike artifact had said how they got it. Going off the name of the item class, some had brought their faith level with one of the gods of Disgardium to maximum. They completed magnificent quest chains from the gods, but it was all in vain. Yes, they got untold rewards, but there were no godlike items among them.
There were rumors, which the developers neither confirmed or denied, that godlike items were invented as a stimulus for players who kept to themselves. They said, in the World of the Trade of Warfare, the so-called founding fathers, the very best stuff could only be gotten as part of a strong clan or static (big raid groups with permanent member lists). And those who preferred to play alone were left out in the cold. The chance of succeeding with a randomly formed group was minimal.
It was as if Snowstorm decided that stubborn loners deserved a reward as well. So receiving godlike objects did not require combat prowess, just a flexible mind and adventurous gameplay.
I had never considered my style of gameplay, nor had I considered red or gold items. Sure a few days back I was elated by blues from Dargo and Crusher and had gone to great pains not to give them up to Crag or the Dementors. I’d earned them with the sweat of my brow after all. But ever since then, something was different in my perception of the world and surroundings.
Chance of receiving improved loot: success!
Reward quality improved to epic.
That message flittered past my attention in the heat after battle, but now I could see that epic stuff wasn't guaranteed to fall from the bosses of Evil from the Depths. A rare item was supposed to drop, but... I got lucky.
And here was the purple epic from the ghastly praying mantis Faras. I focused on the object and before me came a laundry list of text:
Gloves of Evil from the Depths
Epic, part of the Evil from the Depths set
Cloth armor.
Armor: 24.
+19 Intelligence.
+17 Endurance.
+9% critical damage chance.
+7% spell power bonus.
Durability: 300/300.
Requires level: 20.
Sell price: 93 gold coins.
Chance of losing after death reduced by 90%.
Evil from the Depths set: belt, armbands, crown, gloves, neckpiece, robe, sandals and pants.
2/8 of the Evil from the Depths set: Reduces magic damage taken by 15%.
4/8 of the Evil from the Depths set: When taking damage in battle, the wearer has a chance to spawn a 350-HP shield.
6/8 of the Evil from the Depths set: +20 Intelligence.
8/8 of the Evil from the Depths set: +100 armor, +33% mana regeneration.
My first epic loot was definitely made for mages. And it was part of a set! I thought it would be just as good for Crawler as for Tissa. We had never agreed on how to split the loot, and they didn't know what I just got.
But I didn't want to lie. Still, I wanted to check something first. Even if this low-level epic could be sold for a couple thousand gold, I preferred to take a risk and show it to the Dementors first, then see what they said. I could decide what to do next from there.
There were another seven bosses in this dungeon but, if I killed all of them myself, even my friends would start to ask questions. Plus, I only signed onto this to sit quietly off to the side and resurrect them if they all died. So let the Dementors do some work tomorrow as well.
With these thoughts in mind, I set the interface alarm clock to six forty-five AM and fell asleep.
* * *
"Wake up Alex, wake up," whispered a soft and charming female voice.
The tone started increasing in intensity and eventually I realized it was not a dream, but the interface alarm clock. I opened my eyes, and closed them right away. I wanted to sleep so bad, but I had to get up. I saw that the group chat window was blinking frantically. That meant very many fresh messages.
I opened my eyes again. Still lying there, I made sure my health was all the way back and Curse of the Undead was gone. Then I skimmed the chat:
[6:32] [Group] [Crawler]: Scyth, we're close. Infect went in
stealth to check the entrance to the ins. How's it going?
[6:33] [Group] [Tissa]: Good morning, Alex! Hey, are you inside?
[6:37] [Group] [Tissa]: Alex?
[6:41] [Group] [Bomber]: Hey, Sheppard, I picked up a couple quarts of fresh-brewed halfling coffee in the Bubbling Flagon! I'm gonna personally make sure you drink all of it!
[6:47] [Group] Infect has entered Evil from the Depths.
[6:48] [Group] [Crawler]: Scyth, we're in the mine. There are no Axiom guys here, we're going in. The portal says the location is unavailable, but Infect already went in.
Class-A Threat (Disgardium Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 31