by D Wolfin
Fire Resistance: 30%
Slash Resistance: 15%
Abilities:
- Durability will self-repair. However, any durability lost under 30 must be manually repaired with bronyx.
- There is a 5% chance that fire attacks will be completely nullified.
Meridium Boots of Haste
Boots made of the rare ore Meridium. The metal is rather light and said to be easily enchantable. This pair of boots in particularly has a strong haste enchantment on them.
Requirements:
- Level 64
- Agi 47
- Dex 22
Armour Type: Meridium(Medium)
Defence: 13
Durability: 35/35
Weight: 6.8lbs
Abilities:
- Movement speed increased by 10% when worn
Fire Imbued Meridium Scramasax
A scramasax made from high quality meridium. The ruby embedded at the base of the blade has been around the goblin 'Grigor' for so long that it has absorbed some of the goblin's fire powers for attack and defence.
The metal has been tempered to have a sharper edge for longer, but meridium is a naturally stiff metal, causing it to easily break under pressure.
The blade is 43cm long.
Requirements:
- Level 72
- Dex 65
Weapon Type: Single Edge/Short Sword
Attack: 78 - 86
Durability: 28/28
Weight: 4.1 lbs
Abilities:
- Deals 7 - 11 Fire damage upon striking a target
- Can be used to cut/deflect minor fire magic.
What incredible equipment! But looking at the high requirements for them showed that this dungeon was clearly meant for players much higher levelled than me.
I also take note of these two new materials that the equipment is made of. Meridium appears to be a very stiff metal, quite strong but with a low durability. Bronyx was clearly your heavy armour providing fantastic defence that a tanker would wear, it even had a self-repair ability that massively increased its value.
Truthfully, I have been a little concerned with money, the apple sales have been great, but they barely payed for half of my expenses. I decide to keep the sword and sell the other two pieces of equipment. I could not use them anyway.
Walking across to Fen, I see that she is still unconscious. I think I may be able to wake her with cold water, but I have none left. Leaving her till she wakes up on her own I lie down and rest myself.
I held my left hand up and inspect the back of it. Just like I had heard, now that I was no longer under level 50, a black tattoo had shown itself on the back of my palm.
A symbol of a wolf inside a circle, the mark that I belong to the Kingdom of Glace.
My entire mind felt like it was still running on fumes. Mentally I was ready to collapse, but the game forcibly kept me awake in consideration to being inside a dungeon. Lying on the floor, my eyes are closed as I empty myself of all thoughts.
I don't know how much time passed, the entire experience seemed to be out of focus from my exhaustion.
A faint nudge on the side of my face revealed Fen, wide awake and full sized. Standing up, there is a slight pain as my mind still seems to be spinning from the high speed movements in battle.
"I'm glad to see you are okay Fen, that one was far too close. I don't want to lose you, you know." I had a gentle touch to my voice, all my past anxiety turning into relief and calmness inside of me.
The wolf glances down, regretting its carelessness.
"Well it's time to go, let's shrink you down and-" I was cut off by a voice speaking directly into my head
'Lost, are you there? I need help. I logged back on where I left in the dungeon. I don't think I would be able to get out by myself and Sir Laurence is currently offline.'
It was Verde! Back online finally after a week.
I was extremely unsure as to whether I should go and help or not though. While I did want to apologise to her, I feel scared to face her again after what I did.
'Please, Lost.'
'Don't worry. I am nearby and on my way.'
How could I possibly refuse her when she asks like that.
"Fen," I address the wolf behind me, "There is a slight change of plans. Verde is stuck in this dungeon so we are going to go escort her outside along the way."
As I go to pull out a scroll of shrinking, a pair of slender arms suddenly wrap around me, pinning my arms to my side and preventing me from moving. My heart skips a beat, I can feel the body of the person behind me to be about nearly my size, but my equipment prevents me from discovering more.
Before I have time to react to the threat, a voice enters my ear.
"Don't... Go to her. She is a liar. Let her die and just stay with me..."
While Verde's voice was intoxicating. This crystal clear voice is pervading, causing my whole body to react, and leaving a longing to feel it again when it was gone.
Going from the events of me telling the wolf what we were doing to this person behind me. It couldn't be.
"Fen?" I try to turn around but the grip of the person tightens, crushing my arms and preventing me from looking at them.
"NO!...” I sense a vague sense of uncertainty in the voice, “You can't turn around. I don't have any... Clothes..."
What I couldn't feel was the shape of her body, although my mind was currently in the process of filling in the blanks from my imagination.
What I could feel however, was all the heat inside my body rising to my face.
Chapter 8.5 – Chronix’s Fury
-Chronix-
Outside of virtual reality, my name is Chrona Axelle. At 19 years of age, I live in the Upper District of Taile. Sticking my short blonde hair straight up so I seem slightly taller, I'm a little touchy about the fact I am slightly shorter than most other people my age.
My parents are quite rich. Owning a chain of electronics stores, I can live my life comfortably at home, doing whatever I like.
Back when I was at private school I was always the best at everything I did, whether it was sports or academics. I was always picked first for everything, and even the teachers favoured me. That's right, I was always the best.
That's why when I started playing End Online, I could not bear the humiliation of not being the best any more. I eventually stopped going to university, devoting myself solely to the game. My parents did not mind as they simply wanted me to take over the family business, which I was already more than capable of doing.
Even with the extended time I put into the game, people slowly got further ahead of me, higher levels, and better equipment. Each and every single one was a blow to my pride. Especially that player, Gladox.
I spent an incomprehensible amount of time chasing him around after seeing his videos. But no matter what, by the time I got there, he was already long gone.
I started up a guild, 'The Swords of Light', with other likeminded people who aimed to be the best. Of course, I had to have joining rules to prevent every single lowlife from joining simply because it was a strong guild.
You must be at least half my level to join. If you fall below that while you are a member, then you are immediately excommunicated.
More and more players started to get ahead of me, no matter how much time I put in or how hard I tried. My pride took blow after blow.
There were also other incidents that occurred, like that day at the 'Unknown Goblin Lair'.
***************************************************
Me and my top nine guild members climbed over the snowy hills and entered the goblin encampment we discovered about two months ago.
The goblins in this encampment are strange. We were unable to defeat them two months ago due to their abnormally high defence and group tactics. But that changed.
We start by picking off the goblins around the surrounding hills, making sure they don't gather too many numbers together and overwhelm us. Even at level 237, a large group
of these rascals can cause me problems.
I would possibly have an easier time if I spend more time in raising my stats, but I am far too busy trying to raise my level for that. I simply compensate for it with high level equipment.
Name: Chronix
Health: 2977/3343
Stamina: 600/725
Lvl: 237
Lvl UP: 74%
Str: 92 + 42
Agi: 72 + 33
Dex: 80 + 19
Int: 24 + 7
Mnd: 61 + 12
Lck: 44
Infamy: 320
Alignment: -50
God: The Gold Serpent
Belief: 120
Equipped Skills:
Virtue of the Gold Serpent (SLvl 12, 0%)
Sword&Shield Proficiency (SLvl 21, 72%)
Physical Prowess (SLvl 38, 17%)
Tough Body (SLvl 22, 42%)
Heavy Armour Proficiency (SLvl 35, 8%)
Sonar (SLvl 26, 81%)
Peripheral Vision+ (SLvl 12, 2%)
HP Boost (SLvl 14, 5%)
High Speed (SLvl 23, 66%)
Reserve Skills:
[Empty]
I slightly regret all the negative points I have gathered. But that has been a part of my progress in getting stronger. I found a hidden temple and joined the faith supporting the 'Gold Serpent' when I was still level 150.
I ended up doing some dark quests for the faith and gained belief in my god for completion of those quests, but it caused my alignment to slowly drop as well. At least, I gained a useful skill from joining the religion.
The skill itself doesn't increase in the standard way, but instead its level is set to one tenth of my belief.
Virtue of the Gold Serpent (SLvl 12, 0%) -Active
Through your devout belief of the Gold Serpent, you have
gained abilities granted from your god. The more belief you
have in your god, the stronger your abilities become.
The Gold Serpent signifies wealth and deception.
SLvl 12:
- Agility + 12
- Dexterity + 12
- Capable of selling items for 12% more than ordinary prices,
there is not penalty for this.
- You can spend gold to cause your next attack to be a critical
strike.
60Gold = Base damage X 2.2
- This ability is Soul Bound, cannot be unequipped as long as
you maintain faith in the Gold Serpent.
It is quite a useful skill. The higher its level, the more bonus damage it does. But alternatively, the higher the level, the more gold it costs to use.
I horde gold and use this attack repeatedly on the strong enemies I need to kill quickly. After all, a critical hit ignores most of an opponent’s defences.
Once I clean up with the goblins with my guild members, we quickly pick off and finish the rest of the goblins in the encampment. There was surprisingly less goblins than there should have been, almost as if somebody had come by in the past few days and cleaned them up.
After chasing a few stragglers over a hill, we come back to the encampment to find two players and a massive wolf has just exited the dungeon.
'This is my dungeon! What do you fools think you are doing here!?'
Signalling the rest of the members that are all over level 150, we approach the small group of players.
Focusing my ears on them, I hear the woman whispering to the hooded man to be careful of me and who I am. What she says is a little insulting, but she speaks the truth.
I see that they are not very high levelled, so they probably only went on the first floor, but I think they can pay for going down to the second floor as well. Calculating all the numbers in my head I can deduce they were in there overnight, so they can pay for two days’ worth of fees for using my dungeon.
I have learned a lot of business sense from my father. Considering I doubt they fought the boss, whom we came here for, just paying the bill of using somebody else's hunting ground is more than enough to satisfy me. I consider my offer to be quite benevolent actually.
I even offer for them to trade their equipment for the fee as an alternative if they can't afford that. Offering them to trade that giant pet wolf may have been a bit much, but nobody would ever agree to that.
Only, the fools try to run.
"ArrowHunter, GoldFleece." I let out a sigh as I call the two, "They are bound to double back and go to Iceridge. You are the fastest of us so go intercept them. Teach them not to mess with the Swords of Light."
"Yep, yep." If this game didn't have an age limit of eighteen, I would swear ArrowHunter was a pre-pubescent boy, "We will go do that! Come on GoldFleece."
The middle-aged bald monk looking man follows the boy as they dash over the hills to wait in the tree line for those players.
'Something really does not look right about that scene.'
"Okay, the rest of us, lets clear our way down into the boss room. It drops fantastic loot and should have respawned only an hour or two ago."
I lead the group into the crevice leading to the dungeon. Each boss has a different respawn count down. this one in particular takes a month.
Thinking back on those two players, I heard the woman call the man 'Lost' but I didn't catch her name. I don't know what it was about her, but something seemed incredibly familiar.
I couldn't see most of her face, but she almost looked like the daughter of the corporate shark my father introduced me to at a party for the upper echelon. That girl was my age, with a stunning beauty that took me breath away at the first glance. I would have thrown away all my pride in that moment just to have her.
But even being from the Upper District of Taile, she was beyond my reach. Even my father showed his utmost politeness to her father, showering him with compliments.
She had given off such a cold demeanour that I could not bring myself to even approach her.
But there is no way a girl like that would be playing a game like this.
Coming back to reality, I realized we have just arrived at the boss room.
"Hang on, how did we get here so quick!? There were barely any fights the entire way here!"
I complain to the guild members in a loud voice, there is no way someone has already been down here!
They all send nervous glances at each other as I storm into the room, straight for the open chest in the middle.
I slam the chest shut and near scream.
"WHAT THE HECK!! EVERYTHING IS GONE!! LOST!! IT MUST HAVE BEEN THOSE TWO PLAYERS EARLIER!!"
I feel rage boiling up in me, the kind of feeling I get when somebody is mocking me behind my back.
"Umm... Chronix." One of the members dressed as a samurai spoke up, "It is only a game. I don't think it's quite worth getting so worked up about."
At this time, both ArrowHunter and GoldFleece both come running in at an unbelievable speed.
"Chronix! They got away, but it wasn't our fault!" ArrowHunter started talking first, but GoldFleece cut him off.
"That wolf ran off with the girl in its mouth first. It was so incredibly fast there was no chance of catching it. Then that hooded guy disappeared like smoke directly in front of me."
GoldFleece seemed more awed rather than concerned for his failure, while ArrowHunter seemed more inclined to franticly try and say how it wasn't his fault.
"What are you talking about GoldFleece? I saw it perfectly from where I was standing. He substituted his body and appeared behind you before running off. Only there was two of him at once! He was some kind of ninja! I swear!"
Unable to contain my rage anymore, I shouted as loud as I could possibly manage.
"YOU DARE TO MOCK THE SWORDS OF LIGHT!!! I WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR THIS LOST!!!"
Everyone stood still, rooted on the spot. Stunned at my voice.
***************************************************
Two days passed since the 'Unknown Goblin Lair'.
Back at our headquarters, a m
edium sized residence hidden in Iceridge, I am sitting alone in what we use for a meeting room. The walls have a few paintings and decorations against the cream walls, but the large mahogany table is the attraction in this room.
There are ten seats around the table, four on either side and one on each end. Enough seats for the top ten members of the guild.
Currently, the seat at the end of the table is the only one occupied. I brood in my silent rage when a shadow comes up behind me.
"Chronix," The voice rasps like a coarse wind, "I have brought you the scrolls you wished."
Silently I unroll one and speak the incantation.
"Whether thou be in the deepest sky, whether thou be on the tallest mountain. I bequeath thoust identity to reveal thy location! LOST!"
The scroll burns up and forms into a window in front of me
Name: Lost
Direction: North-North-East
Distance: 139miles
'He must be at the border of the kingdom!? How did he get so far in two days!?'
Well, that is two days in real life, or six days in the game. Maybe if he moved nonstop he could manage that.
If he had simply run without paying my demands, then maybe I would not bother with chasing after him. A criminal fleeing interstate is usually something you don't bother chasing, just wait for them to come back.
But this guy cleaned out my entire dungeon, and caused me to act in such a way I allowed my pride to be torn to shreds.
One of my guild members recorded the entire spectacle, putting the short video up on the End Forums. Over a hundred thousand views, and thousands of comments mocking me. I cannot possibly show my face again.
Safe to say the guild member who did it is no longer with us.
I turn around to the shadow to speak.
"Congratulations, as of today. You are excommunicated from the Swords of Light."
I see the stunned expression come over the player as the guild symbol vanished from the back of his left hand.
"But don't worry. You are more than welcome to re-join. I just need you to do a little task first. I want you to take all these location scrolls and find the player called 'Lost'. Join his party, or follow him around. Just keep track of him and report his locations to me so I can come and pay him a visit."