I neared the miner that I was stalking towards, performing an Assassinate as I got into range. The goblin came out of his daze, screaming, as it turned towards me, with a green hue of an aura now surrounding it since it was now also poisoned.
I followed up with an Eviscerate as I saw a blue fireball smash into the goblin, killing it. The illusionist must also have some ability in damage spells I thought to myself. Even though the Illusionist’s damage spells were typically weak, since the class was designed for crowd control, they did have them.
I moved towards the next goblin, performing an Eviscerate and Garrote in quick succession, breaking the goblin’s daze. Again, I saw the blue fireball hit the goblin that I was attacking, and from the corner of my eye. I saw a golden shield made of magic appear in front of Adrian, while I saw that I had the soft golden glow surrounding me.
“This is going to hurt,” I thought to myself as I got into a low, semi-crouched position.
Since I didn’t use my Assassinate ability, the goblin was not quite dead and was able to return my attack. Raising my arm above my head, I blocked the attack with my forearm, missing the parry so that I could perform my Riposte ability. I felt the jagged teeth of the dull blade enter my arm, finally stopping as it hit my bone.
Grinding my teeth, the only thing I could think of was how much it hurt. However, my vision didn’t fade into red, and instead, I grew furious. This trash actually hit me, the rage starting to grow inside of me. With the goblin’s sword still stuck in my arm, I twisted my arm so that my forearm was facing upwards, the sword now below my arm.
I stepped around the goblin and took it’s forehead into my left hand, angling its face upwards as I ripped my arm from it’s sword, bringing the dagger to it’s neck as I whispered through gritting teeth, “Assassinate.” A notification appeared in my view which I didn’t pay attention to, blind with both rage, and pain.
Shortly after we dispatched the other 6 miners, I was covered with sweat and blood. Some of it was mine, however most of the blood was the blood of the goblins. I stepped back, out of breathe while I calmed down and looked at Adrian and the overseer, who was still feebly attacking the dark knight.
Even though Adrian was blocking it’s attacks, he was looking at me with a stunned look in his eyes. Ripping his eyes away from mine, he looked back to the overseer.
“Get some stamina, stealth up, and let’s kill this thing so we can finish the quest,” he said, blocking yet another attack from the overseer.
I stepped backwards, the pain now gone. After a few seconds, I felt a little better now that I was not out of breath. The spells surrounding Adrian rotated back and forth from the golden glow that surrounded him to the magical shield in front of him.
Figuring that the healer must be running a bit low on mana by now, I stepped forwards, instantly becoming an invisible shade, stealthed. Creeping to the back of the overseer, Adrian yelled at it, taunting it as he got into a more offensive position and attacked the overseer with his sword. After his attack, I crept behind the overseer and performed Assassinate following it up with both Eviscerate and then Garrote. The overseer was now bleeding, poisoned, and it was silenced just in case it had the ability to call for more help.
It enraged, attacking furiously at Adrian, while I swiftly slashed at the goblin, again and again while I was waiting for the effect auras to dissipate. My vision tinted red as if I was enraged, and after each normal attack, I followed up with Eviscerate in order to keep my damage constantly high. After another 30 seconds or so, the overseer finally gave out it’s last scream as it fell to the floor, dead.
“Well, that was fun,” Adrian said to me in a dead pan voice as I sat on the ground, feeling tired and worn out.
Adrian re-sheathed his sword and put away his shield and started tapping his finger against his leg. The others ran to us shouting.
“Holy shit!”
“Raven! What was that!”
I looked over at them, wondering what they were talking about as Adrian still just stood there, looking down at me.
“Open your ability list and look at Assassinate. What does it say,” he asked me.
Doing as I was told for once, wondering just what the hell was going on, I looked at my Assassinate ability, which was now labeled, “Advanced Assassinate”.
“What the hell is this? Assassinate was able to be evolved?” I thought to myself.
Looking at the description for the advanced ability, I read it out loud so that everyone could hear what the description now said:
Advanced Assassinate: Causes 250% weapon damage. In it's advanced form, assassinate can now be used out of stealth with a 15 second cool down.
“Congrats!” Adrianne shouted as Adrian stood there with a blank face, nothing giving away of what he was thinking.
He had a level 30 assassin though, and since even I didn’t know that the skill could evolve, I could take a guess as to what he was thinking of. He probably wanted to know how the skill evolved, which I wasn’t too sure of myself. All I really remembered about the fight was the pain and the rage that overwhelmed me.
“What happened anyways? I sort of lost myself there,” I meekly asked everyone.
Adrian’s face lit up and he grinned as he laughed.
“You really don’t remember?” he asked.
Shaking my head no, he calmed down a bit and began his story. “Well, if I didn’t know any better, just by the way you were attacking, I would have said that you were a berserker. Somehow, you where able to parry an attack from one of the goblins with your arm, and then you performed the Assassinate skill. I wonder if you forced the ability to evolve? I’ll have to give it a try at some point,” he said as he started looking at something in the distance.
Shaking his head and looked at us again he finished his thought, “Anyways, let’s loot up and move on.”
The overseer ended up dropping a Leather Tunic that went to Kine since it wasn’t an upgrade for me, however, it also dropped an Overseer’s Short Sword, which went to Adrian, even though I had a suspicion that it wasn’t an upgrade for him since he was using all player-made equipment. It wouldn’t kill me though since I couldn’t use it, so I kept my mouth shut about it. After we looted the goblins, we each grabbed the iron ore from the cart, allowing us to finish the quest from Moire.
Now, we had a choice, to either leave the mine and finish the quest, or keep going and kill the boss mob that was surely deeper within the mine. Since I was getting excited to use my new form of Assassinate, I voted on continuing on, even though I was content with returning if the others wanted to and it would allow me to get some decent weapons for the level range. Although, there was a chance that we might come across some decent loot from the boss’s treasure chest.
Needless to say, everyone decided that we would continue on to the end, so we began our journey, deeper into the mine. We formed up as we had before, with Adrian in the lead, myself behind him, and the healer and illusionist behind me. Adrian decided that we should head through the left tunnel to see where that one would go and we slowly started walking, our eyes keeping an eye out for any enemies that we would come across.
Shortly after entering the left path, we saw a goblin patrol walking away from us. From what I could tell, all three goblins were wearing tattered leather tunics and tattered pants. However, the patrol leader was holding a sword, and the other two were using wooden clubs.
Adrian rushed the group as I went into stealth, the temporary shield buff glowing in front of him. He taunted the three goblins as I got into position. Even though I didn’t need to be stealthed for my Assassinate anymore, I still felt that I should, since critical hits were more likely when attacking from stealth.
This time though, instead of attacking the goblins with the clubs, I decided to attack the one with the sword. Only in bigger fights, like the one with the overseer, was it wise to get rid of the trash monsters first, since it would help the healer to keep the tank alive. In small fights like these, simple h
eals that worked over a period of time were sufficient, and the healer wouldn’t need to waste mana with their larger heals.
Easily killing the patrol, we continued on walking through the mine’s curves and bends. Deeper into the mine, a foul, dark yellow fog started to form. We ran into 3 more patrols before we reached another cavern which gave us all an additional level. This one much larger than the one with the overseer. However, unlike the cavern with the overseer, this one was dark and silent, no sounds coming from within. It was, eerie, to say the least.
“I don’t like it,” Adrian said, stopping before he got into the cavern. “Since we all got a level on the way down, let’s spend our points before we go in. From the guide, we should be facing a hobgoblin of some sort that runs this place.”
After allocating my stat points like I planned out, I opened up my skill list and upgrading Advanced Assassinate to level 5, Apply Poisons to level 2, and Stealth to level 3. I gave Adrian a slight nod, letting him know that I was ready. Once everyone was finished, we entered the cavern.
Almost immediately entering the cavern, we spread out, with Adrian in front of us. Flames starting to appear in the sconces that were mounted on the walls one at a time, until the cavern was entirely lit from the soft light from the flames.
I heard Adrianne gasp, as we all saw the body of the large hobgoblin. It was already dead from a huge, gaping slash, slicing its upper torso in half from a diagonal blow. This was definitely not normal, and I immediately went into stealth and looked around.
“What in the hell?” Kine said, looking around as well.
Adrian went over to the dead hobgoblin still maintaining a soft white glow around it. It hadn’t been looted.
“Whatever this is, it looks like whatever killed the boss didn’t loot it. Maybe the mine is bugged and we’re sharing an instance with someone?” he said, just as confused as the rest of us.
Adrianne saw the treasure chest first, still unopened. “Honey, did you find a key from the hob?” she asked as she walked towards the chest.
“Yea, whatever killed it didn’t take the loot. We got 5 silver and the key to the chest.” he responded.
I should have known they were married, or at least involved, with their names almost being exactly alike. We all walked over to the treasure chest that would have the loot from the boss in it. Adrian unlocked the chest and we looked inside.
Our eyes lit up with the amount of loot inside of the chest. There was 16 pieces of hobgoblin cloth, which was enough for us to each have 4 each, a ring, and to top it off, a skill book.
“First things first, let’s take a look at the ring,” Adrian said to everyone as he pulled it out and holding it out in front of him, letting us see what it looked like.
It seemed like it was made from iron, or another type of dull metal, with slashes appearing on the outside of it. Analyzing it, I looked at the stats for it. It named the “Ring of the Hobgoblin,” and was a level 10 ring that gives the wearer 10 strength, and had a bonus effect of giving the owner 10% additional physical damage.
Since we were using the “need before greed” dungeon loot rules, both Adrian and I said out loud, almost at the same time, “Roll dice.”
The system announced our rolls so that everyone around us could hear, “Raven wins the dice roll with a 52. Adrian rolled 43. Congratulations Raven!”
I grinned as I snatched the ring from Adrian who looked as if I stepped on his virtual dog. Thinking that it sucked to be him, I equipped the ring, feeling as if I grew a bit in power. It could have been just me though.
Adrian then pulled out the skill book so that we could look at the cover of the skill book and read the title. It was the skill, Shadow Step, which was a rare skill that cost 100 mana and allows the player to immediately stealth and teleport to a target that was within 5 meters. Each additional skill point invested in it would increase that range by 10% per level.
I looked around myself to see that the three others were all looking at me, their mouths gaping open. Each trying, and failing, to say something. I was stunned myself that this skill dropped. It took me over six months of searching for this one skill before I got lucky when I was playing Shadowblood.
When used correctly, this skill was one of the skills that everyone, including some assassins, thought was overpowered since the assassin could literally attack, vanish, attack, and vanish as long as they had the mana to continue to do so. In fact, this was one of the skills that I had used during the tournament after I first stunned the healers.
“I call dibs,” I said to the others as I grinned like a Cheshire cat.
Adrian reluctantly gave me the skill book which went into my inventory since rare and unique skills could only be learned from a trainer once you had the skill book.
We walked towards the door that in the back of the cavern since it would lead back to the entrance when suddenly the entire room was surrounded by black and red flames. The others looked around, clear that they didn’t know what was happening. However, I had seen these types of flames before. They were called the Flames of Entrapment. The flames would not allow anyone in, or out of, the circle. Nor could spells be used through the flames from players outside of the flaming circle, which included resurrection spells. There was only one class of monster that I knew of had this spell. The Harbingers.
Harbingers were added eight months ago and were meant to be for extremely high level raid groups that had an average level of 120. The odd thing about these harbingers was that there was only one that spawned in the world at any one time and they were located within a random, high level dungeon. As of yet, no one was able to kill one due to the crappy mechanics that each of them had.
The harbinger slowly started to materialize in front of us as he lowered himself to the ground, slightly kneeling and then standing to his full height which was a towering 5 meters tall. It’s skin was gray and muscular, black and red tattoos covering his bare, upper body showing just how muscular it truly was. It’s black, armored pants were made from Infernal Plate with spikes that looked to be made from bones, lining the sides. It would look like your typical infernal, high-level raid monster if it wasn’t for the harbinger’s face. It had an elongated head, skin covering its eyes with what looked like metal staples closing its eyes shut and black ooze coming from the slits between. It had no nose, his face otherwise smooth, until you saw its teeth, an endless amount of sharp teeth that clearly showed that it was a carnivore, no matter if the meat was dead, or alive.
I knew this Harbinger from one of the raids that I went on, it was the Harbinger of Chaos. It had a devastating area of effect ability that reached the entire area of the flames causing 50% of your total health in damage and stunned everyone in the entire area for 2 minutes. He would cast this stun every 2.5 minutes, which meant that the entire raid only had 30 seconds between casts to get everyone healed and to damage him. However, the really shitty mechanic he had was that his normal attack, which occurred every 5 seconds, had an effect that caused instant death. It was quite an impossible raid, and here he was, in a rank 1 dungeon.
“Well, I think we found what killed the hobgoblin,” I said while laughing, resigned to my fate. I could do nothing more but hope for a quick, painless death.
“I’ll take…” Adrian said, before his life was snuffed out, his body now cut into half from his stomach.
It now stood before the 3 of us that were remaining, his arms behind it’s back holding onto what looked like a Death’s Scythe. The scythe curving over his shoulders as if it was watching us, waiting for us to move. I expected to die next since I was in front of the other two that were behind me to my left and right. However, something was… off. It hadn’t used it’s AoE stun yet, which was typically the first thing it did.
I heard a noise that sounded like a sword cutting into the air. The attack was too fast to see. I heard both Kine and Adrianne scream from behind me, then nothing but silence. However, to my eyes, the harbinger never moved. I knew what happened without need
ing to look behind me, still wondering what was going on and why he would be here of all places.
“Harbinger of Chaos… Chaos… Noctis is the Goddess of Shadows which is aligned with Chaos. It can’t be possible, can it? Think! When I was part of that raid, did anyone look at what faction their deity was from? I know mine was apart of the Holy faction,” I rapidly thought to myself, the feeling I had was growing stronger.
Unable to resist this feeling any longer, I dropped to my knee and placed left hand on my left leg. Immediately after, I bowed my head.
“Harbinger.” I said, interested in what would happen next, even if my own death was near.
The harbinger walked towards me, it’s arms still holding the scythe behind him. It took its steps slowly, coming closer and closer. I could feel myself sweating from both terror and, glee? This couldn’t be right. But it came still until stopping in front of me. With my head bowed, I could see it’s boots, made from the same Infernal Plate, metal spikes covering them.
Raven- The Beginning Page 7