Apostle of the Sleeping Gods

by Dan Sugralinov

  “It’s all complicated by the fact that the quest can only be completed in one run-through. If you get wiped, you’ve gotta start all over from the beginning. But you’re already full of larvae, and they live for a week. Now do you understand why nobody has exterminated their nest yet?”

  “Just a sec...” The final piece fell into the puzzle. “So it’s an ins?”

  “Exactly, Scyth,” Infect grinned. “Can you smell what we stand to gain?”

  I sniffed. A First Kill. And something special from Garr Alt.

  * * *

  Two days later, we’d gotten me far enough in the chain that I also had the final quest to clear the Swamp Needler nest. It would have taken more time, but the guys were very familiar with the location so we were working extremely efficiently.

  After our first talk with the leader of the Hunters’ camp, we went toward the lake, the whole shore of which was occupied by Marshreed Catgators. And they really were some creepy reptiles. A deafening, spooky cacophony of catlike meows filled the entire area. The little snakelike crocodiles, their silvery scales shimmering, instantly hid in the mud when they saw us coming. A few of them, based on the bulging strips of ground, were coming in our direction. The reptiles were at level twelve, so they were no problem. Perhaps it was a bit uncomfortable to hit them because they only came up to my knee, but I had hammered down enough tails in just five minutes.

  A couple points of experience dripped into my piggy bank and Garr handed me fifty silver. The next mission in the chain was for Maneating Wolves. They were also pretty simple, and I soon handed in ten Maneating Wolf Fangs for experience and coins. All the while, points filled my reputation piggybanks for the hunters, Garr Alt himself, and Tristad.

  After that, Alt did me a solid and handed out three missions at once, all to genocide dangerous predators. Poisonous Vultures, Electric Gecko and Gigantic Bloodsucking Vampire Bats filling out my sandbox bestiary. Beyond the fact that they filled Bomber’s backpack with various trade ingredients, the group was getting experience for killing and I for completing quests as well. Garr Alt gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder and continued to hand out silver and experience points. But it’s worth noting that he never gave more than one gold per quest.

  The next three missions were also handed out all at once because nobody knew the exact location of the elite monsters. They all had a fantastically large range, and they overlapped, so we could have found any of them at any time.

  “Rare mobs,” Ed explained.

  The rares took us the whole next game day. Dirty Shadow, the vulture boss, was in a cavern inside a huge tree; Storm, a lizard that attacked with electricity was found sunning himself on a plain to the east of the hunters’ camp; Fangginga, which looked more like a pterodactyl than a bat, we tracked down on the edge of the Gloomwood.

  All the elites were level fifteen, but they didn’t stand a chance against our well-practiced group. None of us even died one time, although Infect came very close: I decided to level Stunning Kick and hit Storm with it alone, and the thief outaggro’d me. Anyhow, I got the lizard’s attention back with one Hammer. Fangginga, by the way was our first opportunity to see Hung’s legendary ring in action. As he was tanking the boss, Tissa got distracted levelling offensive spells and wasn’t healing him enough.

  Obviously, we were always coming up against aggressive fauna, which moved us forward in leveling, but we were far from the astronomic pace of Little Gully. That had to do with the fact that I refused to risk using curse of the undead out in the open. There were players all around. So then, on day two, none of us got even one level, though we were all very close. But we were levelling our combat attacks and skills, each getting several minor dings.

  “Impressive,” Garr Alt said when I laid out a feather, a tail and a fang from the three rare mobs. “These creatures multiply faster than we can thin them out,” he complained. “We kill one big wolf and, next thing we know, there’s another. We give them all the same nickname so it feels less scary.”

  He beckoned one of his men, who carried away the trophies. Garr sized me up before assigning the final quest in the chain:

  “I feel you’re ready, Scyth. The Swamp Needlers have been bothering us for many years. These spawn of the Nether were once just common overgrown insects. About this big,” he said, pointing to his forearm. “But a few years ago, everything changed. The forest and swamp were filled with monsters and creatures, and the needlers are the nastiest of the bunch. No matter how many of them we take out, it’s all useless while their queen still lives. Kill her, destroy the nest and you will be pulling a huge thorn out of our butts!”

  Hunters’ camp leader Garr Alt would like you to kill Chuff, Queen of the Swamp Needlers, and destroy her nest.

  Reward:

  — 3000 experience points;

  — 300 gold;

  — your reputation with Dangerous Game Hunters will be increased by 50 points;

  — your reputation with the city of Tristad will be increased by 10 points.

  — one class-based item from the Monster Hunter set.

  I agreed to complete the mission. Garr squeezed my hand and, wishing us luck, went back into his tent, I suspected, to sleep because it was almost midnight.

  “Let’s pick back up tomorrow,” I said, yawning.

  * * *

  It was the first time I was seeing dungeons of this type. No long winding tunnels and corridors, just a simple underground cave we happened to need a portal to enter.

  To be honest, first we had to fight through one group of Swamp Needlers. They looked like gigantic mutant flies with a thick stinger on the end of a little trunk, which stuck out of the lower part of their body, which was how they injected their larva into their victims. Honestly, those ones didn’t get the chance. We took them down from afar before they could get near us. We all had ranged attacks: Infect threw knives, I shot my bow, Tissa and Crawler hit with spells and Bomber always carried a crossbow to pull mobs.

  “Another bug ins,” I thought. “This probably isn’t a coincidence considering how strictly the Department of Education censors sandboxes. After all, killing insects isn’t the same as killing more humanoid creatures, even in VR...”

  “Don’t move!” Crawler warned, knocking me off track. “Scyth, let me remind you of the tactics as far as we know. In the center of the cave, there is a clutch of huge eggs...”

  “Hold up, that doesn’t make sense,” I muttered. “Do they lay eggs or inject larva?”

  “Hell if I know,” the tank shrugged. “What do you care?”

  “Whoever designed these mobs must not have had a great understanding of biology, that’s all,” Infect threw out.

  “I suspect we can only destroy the eggs after we’ve beaten Chuff,” Ed kept repeating what he already explained on the way here. But now it was all right in front of us. “She will appear after an unknown number of waves of needlers. They’re all identical, but every wave will have more and higher level. We never got to the last wave. It doesn’t look all that hard at first glance, a couple dozen mobs up to level sixteen by wave eight but, by that point, the whole group has crazy health debuffs...”

  “You can say that again!” Bomber chuckled nervously. “I used to tank back then and, understandably, took the most larvae. By wave eight, my health would be down to six percent. And that was with maximum healing!”

  “There’s a one-minute break between waves,” Tissa added. “If not for the debuff, passing this ins would be easy as pie. Eat some food, drink some potions, re-up your buffs and off to the races!”

  “You said you’ve tried three times,” I said. “Why so few? You gave Evil from the Depths a bunch of tries. But this is the same, a dungeon no one has ever taken down...”

  “Yeah but we already knew it was hopeless before the third attempt,” Infect winced. “It’s obvious mathematically. Every needler can lay two or three larvae and, even though they’re mostly attacking the tank, they choose a random target for the debu
ff. So keep that in mind. And we didn’t have enough damage to take them down before they could lay larva. After that, just imagine. You have to go around with that debuff for a whole week! We never left the city. A sneeze could have killed us...”

  “I know what to do.” I pulled out my bow, preparing to shoot the creatures with plague arrows. “I don’t give a crap about total health, but you might not make it to the boss. Maybe it’d be better for you to wait outside the ins. After all, it’ll be a challenge for you with that debuff afterward.”

  “I’ll take the out!” Infect took heart.

  “But what about the experience?” Tissa looked to Crawler.

  “Scyth is right,” he answered. “We won’t be able to farm for a week after that. And going after mobs with dribbles of life, risking death and losing experience... No, we can’t afford that. Actually, it’s strange we didn’t think of it right away...!”

  And that decided it.

  One after the next, my classmates left the cave and I was left alone. I crouched down and started to think. What if the debuff ignored curse of the undead? I’d get my hundred larva and what then? Would I be torn to shreds or what?

  “I’ll never find out if I don’t check,” I thought and got up. I took a couple steps, stopped and pulled back on my bowstring. I heard a clacking in front of me and a couple needlers flew up from the nearest row of eggs, which glowed in the dark of the cavern.

  Swamp Needler, level 12

  Magical creature

  So then, that meant these weren’t exactly insects. Something like Murkiss’s underlings. Mutated creatures, warped. That explained the eggs and larva conundrum. Maybe the latter had been breathed into existence by the Nether.

  I loosed an arrow, looked at their total health and targeted the whole pack. I had enough plague energy that the bar for it didn’t even flicker.

  Two seconds per shot, twenty in the first wave. These primitive calculations led me to believe that perhaps I should have told my clanmates to come back. But I weighed everything and decided against it. After all, my conclusions were based only on the first pack. By wave five, there would be fifty of these needlers, and I simply wouldn’t be able to shoot them all down fast enough. Debuffs would be inevitable.

  I got my first larva on wave three. A needler flew up to me and poked me with a stinger through my chainmail. The creature writhed fitfully, a wave ran down the trunk and I suddenly felt a very strong, just hellish pain at the injection site. The burning passed and I felt almost nauseous when I saw a lump the size of a pool ball crawling around under my skin, raising even my chainmail. Wriggling, it found a warm spot somewhere in my stomach area and settled in.

  Parasites inside — 1

  A swamp needler has laid its larva inside you. Some of your life force will now go toward nourishing the parasite.

  −1% total health.

  Parasites until full integration: 1/100.

  Duration: 7 days.

  The pain went numb, but after that I considered some strange facts about the intense pain. Was this a result of my threat status? After all, no normal players experienced anything even close to what I felt in battles.

  Taking advantage of my pause, two more needlers attacked and a third was buzzing repellently nearby, preparing to attack, opening its mandibles wide and bristling out its needles. “You’re an ugly bugger, aren’t you?” I thought, mixing normal punches with Hammers in a panic. I had no need for Combos. There was no need to save plague energy, so I could level my move in a more comfortable setting.

  The fourth and fifth waves showed how the Swamp Needlers earned their name. Dozens of the bugs shot me with hundreds of sharp poisonous needles the size of a finger, then sandbagged me, injecting their larva into my body.

  Parasites inside — 99

  A swamp needler has laid its larva inside you. Some of your life force will now go toward nourishing the parasite.

  -99% total health.

  Parasites until full integration: 99/100.

  Duration: 7 days.

  Feeling the next stinger poke, I got on guard. The larva crawled down the trunk and got stuck, unable to make it into my body. Praise be to the Destroying Plague!

  The debuff progress bar was stuck at ninety-nine percent! The curse of the undead worked its magic, not letting it kill me with a one-hundredth larva. I cracked my fingers for show and started handing out punches left and right. The ghastly insects exploded into quarts of slime, lymph fluid and chitin. I was even adding too much damage to make it a sure thing.

  Strangely, none of the mobs left any loot behind. Between waves, I wrote how I was doing in the group chat and read messages from the guys. Sympathizing with my position, they were entertaining me as best they could.

  [18:12] [Clan] [Crawler]: Axiom has set an entry price for the Sarantapod Hive. One thousand gold!

  [18:13] [Clan] [Scyth]: Big Po’s being his usual self! “Like a dog in the manger,” as my Uncle Nick says. Haha! By the way, wave eight is coming up.

  [18:13] [Clan] [Tissa]: Alex, you might be surprised, but there’s a waitlist until the end of the week!

  [18:14] [Clan] [Infect]: I say it’s time for us to save up for signal amulets!

  ...

  [18:16] [Clan] [Scyth]: I’ll be an archery master any day now. The skill’s already at level five! By the way, here comes wave nine...

  [18:16] [Clan] [Crawler]: Look at you, Sheppard! We’ll come back then. We went over to the lake for a minute. Tissa was picking flowers and Bomber cast a line to level his prof, but I don’t think he caught a damn thing.

  [18:17] [Clan] [Tissa]: Not flowers, roots! And by the way, they’re for you, Ed!

  [18:18] [Clan] [Bomber]: Hey! I caught some Oily Carp! You can level your cooking, Scyth!

  Tissa had taken Herbalism, and Crawler Alchemy, an excellent combination of professions. Infect took the weirdest trade, Archeology. It made no sense because there wasn’t really anywhere to excavate in the sandbox. But our Arab Indiana Jones was not going to change trade.

  By that point, I was fighting mechanically: shoot down fifteen or twenty needlers before they got to me, swat down the rest, see what they were writing in the chat, then walk circles around the cave looking for secret hiding spots passageways or treasures. I didn’t find anything, and that ran counter to my dad’s tips. He always said unfinished ins’s would contain items players had dropped. And based on the history of the Nest of the Swamp Needlers, there should have been a large amount of stuff.

  By the time I was done with wave ten, I had brought Stunning Kick up to level nine, and archery and Quickshot up to six.

  I wrote in the chat that they should hurry into the ins because, once the boss came, it would already be too late.

  They entered the cave just as the earth underfoot began to tremble. At the far wall, a wide passageway opened and the colossal body of the queen emerged.

  Chuff, Queen of the Swamp Needlers, level 21

  Magical creature

  Dungeon Boss

  Chuff was covered in whitish slimy skin and I was immediately reminded of a biology lesson. A big fat maggot with a short body, she had no appendages, but she did have something else: nasty openings all over, dripping slime. And from them came thirty-foot-long, winding tentacles that gave a slapping sound. They were crowned with a stinger that looked like the one on the needlers, but way bigger.

  “What were they smoking?” Infect asked. “What sober person could think up something like this?”

  The creature started toward us. It was somehow reminiscent of Mok’Rhyssa but, where I’d say she was a ten out of ten on the disgust scale, I’d put Chuff at a full fifteen. Just looking at her made me want to puke.

  “Ugh, we didn’t eat any Zombie Rat,” Bomber said, chagrinned. “Maybe there’s still time?”

  “No need,” I said. “You aren’t gonna have to fight.”

  I wasn’t planning to draw this out. Even the idea of grazing her made me nauseous! So I took out my bow, pulled ba
ck the string and loosed an arrow backed up with twenty thousand points of plague energy. Whistling through the air, it lodged into her whitish slimy skin.

  “Congratulations on the first...” I started, smiling. But I was mistaken. I stared at the boss’s life bar in disbelief, seeing that it was still full. “What the...”

  With a sob, Chuff stopped for a moment, then kept coming.

  Chapter 24. Swamp Bugs

  THE BOSS, LEAVING a broad trail of slime behind it, froze for a second, choosing a target, then came decisively at me. I studied the logs: