I really hoped there would be something cool, because I genuinely agreed with Dan. Just going through and beating up on mobs that were not a challenge wasn’t fun at all, especially when they didn’t have any loot.
My theory about the vow of poverty was becoming solidified as we tore through each Monk. Not a single drop. But after thirty minutes of killing, Jason let out with a mighty cheer.
“I wasn’t even paying attention to my experience bar. Remember, these guys are Yellow!”
Jason was right. I was creeping up on Level 29, as were the rest.
As Dan rounded the corner with the next Monk, Jason yelled out that this one was Yellow too.
“I take it back, Alex. We can totally take our time here and search the place out thoroughly.”
If the first rule of gaming was that no one wanted an overpowered player in the game, the second rule was this: never underestimate the lure of easy experience.
What had been a disappointment suddenly became a location these guys would have stayed at for days. However, if the last Monastery was any indication, there wouldn’t be any respawn of the Monks. Once defeated, they were done, just like the Wraiths.
Another hour passed, and we had cleared the Monastery of every last Defiled Monk. Dan wanted to make another pass through the halls, just to make sure. I saw no harm in a little more time and told him it was better to be thorough than lazy.
Dan returned with a sorrowful look, so I knew he hadn’t found any more mobs. There was reason to rejoice, though. We had arrived at a boss.
In the next room were two noticeable things. The first was that there were piles of small bones everywhere. It looked like hundreds of Swamp Rat skeletons littering the floor.
The second was the boss, a Death Mage of Loust. It was Red, naturally, and looked worse off than the Defiled. Despite our desire for an enjoyable fight, I really wanted to get out of this swamp. The constant damp air and the smell of mold and rot everywhere was driving me more than a little batty. I couldn’t imagine logging out in this area, either.
I relayed what was in the room and told the guys to come on in. I positioned myself behind the Death Mage and waited for Wayne to get his aggro so I could engage. It seemed the Death Mage had other ideas.
The fucker wanted to talk.
“I see you made it past the Monks. Sneak your way in here, too, did you?”
Dan was the first to respond. “We didn’t need to sneak in here. We took out all of your filth.”
The Death Mage looked around for a few moments and then said, “Sneak your way in here, too, did you?”
It looked like the leader of the group was the one who had to answer the question, but I didn’t want to lose my Invisible status. I tried to answer while still behind the boss. “We didn’t sneak in here.”
Another several moments passed and then the Death Mage repeated the question a third time.
“I really hate when quest mobs get stuck on a loop!”
It can be one of the most frustrating things in a game. You approach an NPC who you suspect will give you a quest, however he or she will only release that quest when you say the correct phrase that triggers their programming. Players have been known to shout at NPCs for hours, trying countless variations of responses, to get a quest. This is what players call a loop, because each time you respond, the NPC will simply repeat the last question over and over again.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Dan. I think I just need to be visible. If there is one thing that I admire about the AI in this game, more than any other, is that we’ve never encountered an NPC that couldn’t answer a question. The level of evolution this AI has must be incredible.”
I joined my friends and dropped my Invis. I then said again, “We didn’t sneak in here.”
“The Monks, they are gone?”
“I’ll answer that question when you answer one of mine. What did you mean when you said we sneaked in here ‘too’?”
“The man who came before you! That one must have had an incantation that allowed him to move without the walking dead detecting him. Yet he didn’t realize that I was not dead at all. He was practically next to me when I started to feed. His life was so good, so filling. But not enough, it was never enough. Now you must tell me! The Monks, are they gone?”
“Yes, your soldiers are no more.”
The Death Mage looked even more frail as he started hacking away. After a few moments, I realized he was laughing, although it was the most pneumonia-laced laugh I’d ever heard.
“My soldiers? You think they were my soldiers?” The Mage said as he slowly made his way toward us. And I am talking like ninety-year old with a walker slow.
“You fools! Those were my imprisoners! Finally, I will be free. Those Monks hated me more than they hated you!”
I was as confused as everyone else. It was obvious we had a Death Mage in front of us, and those Monks were clearly Undead. I knew we had to kill this guy, but I wanted some answers first, for my own curiosity if nothing else.
“I guess you aren’t much of a Death Mage then if you couldn’t control the Undead.”
The Death Mage stopped and stared at me with obvious hatred. “You know nothing of my power, of the time I have spent here! Those creatures were not Undead. They were Defiled. Had they truly been Undead, I could have taken over this entire region with their power!”
I didn’t understand the difference, and this mob seemed to have quite the storyline. I figured if I kept commenting, he would keep talking. “I didn’t see any difference when we killed them. Acted just like Undead.”
“Of course your small mind didn’t see the difference. You are imbeciles. All of you.”
“See, it doesn’t feel very good when someone calls you names, now does it?”
“Now is not the time, Dan.”
“Just saying.”
I turned my attention back on the Death Mage. “If it acts like the Undead and dies like the Undead, then I’m just going to call them Undead.”
“Walks like a duck, talks like a duck?” Wayne whispered at me.
“I improvised. I doubt the mob would understand that.”
“The Undead can be controlled by a Master of Death, such as myself. But the Defiled, they are bound to the place of their demise. How was I to know that these urchins would be connected to the very core of this building? Each one I killed returned as an enemy yet again! They have hunted me ever since. At each attempt to leave, I have been thwarted! I have only survived because of the creatures that scurry through these halls,” the Death Mage said as he waved at the hundreds upon hundreds of bones littering every part of the large room.
“But no longer. Now I am free! And once I have fed and removed you from this world, I will return to my former glory!”
“Why would you attack the Monks at all?”
“Loust returns, and his children will rid this land of those who would stand against him. It was my honor to remove this stain from our new world!”
“Hey, Wayne.”
“Yeah, Alex?”
“You know how I keep telling you to not hit things?”
“Yup.”
“Well you won’t hear a word from me on this one.”
“That’s all I needed to hear.” Wayne yelled out a war cry and ran full charge at the Death Mage, swinging his war hammer at the face of the caster.
A shield popped up around the Death Mage, and he did that hack laugh again. “Did you think I wouldn’t come prepared for a fight?”
I didn’t wait much longer before I started throwing my blades at the shield as well. Dan had already begun firing arrows as quick as he could. I wish we had those Ertunium arrowheads already, but it would be another week at least. If there was anything that clearly would be vulnerable to one of those arrows, it was a purely magic shield.
“Now, let’s see just how tasty you are,” the Death Mage said as he began to cast a spell.
“Ewww. That’s sick, dude.”
Dan was right. If th
is were a normal quest, I might ask the Wanderer to change the words.
Several seconds later, the Mage launched his magical attack directly at Wayne. It impacted against Wayne’s breastplate but had no noticeable effect.
“What? How can you possibly resist my spell?”
With Wayne’s war hammer and breastplate, not to mention his Titles and Gift, Wayne’s resistance to Dark spells was over 70 percent.
Thirty seconds later, the shield around the Mage was shattered, and we began to do damage to his body. We were fucking him up. At the rate we were going, he would be dead in less than a minute.
As his hit points diminished, he cast two more spells at Wayne who blocked both of them with his resistance to Dark. Any other person in my group would have likely been severely damaged by that spell, but the mechanics of Resurgence remained and the mob continued to attack the Tank, just as designed.
The hit points were falling so fast that I didn’t even notice when the Mage hit 75 percent. My body certainly felt it, though, and so did my hit points.
I lost 33 percent of my health in one go. I looked at the health bars of my team and saw that Dan and Jason also had lost about 33 percent. Wayne’s hadn’t moved a bit, and he was still at full health.
The Death Mage, however, looked more alive than he had before, and he had a wicked smile on his face. He looked at Wayne again as he began to cast his next spell. This mob had an amazing level of concentration, as none of our attacks had interrupted his casting.
I also noticed that while the Death Mage was still below 75 percent, his hit points were falling way slower, as if taking our health had increased his Armor rating.
When the Mage finally cast at Wayne, there was another yell throughout the hall. “This is impossible! You cannot fight my spells!”
It looked like Wayne’s resistances were still holding out. Since Wayne didn’t need any heals, Jason topped all of us off, and we were all back to full health.
Even though the Mage’s health was dropping more slowly, it was still dropping. We weren’t going to finish him in a minute, but at the rate it was going, we could probably do it in three.
I stepped back from the mob to get a good look around when his hit points hit 50 percent. Since he was a Death mage, I was expecting something horrific, but that was not the case. Instead, it was the exact same spell, only this time it took forty percent of our health. Wayne, however, continued to resist.
But now the change in the Death Mage was evident. He no longer looked like the corpse he had before. His hit points, again, did not rise. But as the first few rounds of stabs showed, he definitely increased his armor class.
But to his dismay—and to our delight—his next cast was again resisted by Wayne. The Death Mage screamed at the top of his lungs about the insanity of a simpleton Barbarian resisting his spells. It was all very dramatic and kind of funny. Up to this point, Wayne hadn’t lost a single hit point, and the Death Mage was slowly creeping toward 25 percent.
“If the last two are any indication, he is going to drain our hit points and increase his armor. Then we will just chop away at his health. It’s going to take a lot longer than I first thought.”
Just as I predicted, the cast came out again, and the three of us lost almost 45 percent of our Hit Points. Jason, used to this by now, cast three quick heals that put us all at full health. While he was doing that, the Death Mage began casting yet again.
And this time, the spell hit.
Skeleton arms from out of the ground wrapped themselves around Wayne’s legs, and he wasn’t moving.
I began to move back from the Death Mage when I started feeling something on my legs as well. I looked down and saw skeletons wrapping around my legs. The same was happening to Dan and Jason. Even Broham’s legs were wrapped up by the arms.
We were all stuck, and the Death Mage was simply walking around the room, smiling and laughing.
“I have not had such a fight in a long, long time! I am amazed you were able to deplete so much of my health, but have no fear. After I leave here, I will scour the land and be refreshed before any time has passed. But first, I will make you the start to my feast!
“But you,” the Death Mage said creepily, crooking his finger at Wayne as he approached him. “You I will save for last. How dare you resist me, you piece of filth. I will show you my full power!” The Mage screamed and then launched another spell at Wayne, knocking off another 15 percent of his health. “I am so going to enjoy watching you suffer.”
“Hey fearless leader, now would be a good time for one of those ingenious plans of yours!”
“I’m not our leader, Dan! And I’m thinking!”
The Death Mage continued to walk around and gestured toward one of the large piles of rat bones. “But before I kill you all, I think I will have some fun.”
With that, the Death Mage cast his spell and the mound of bones began to move.
“Fuck, man! Do something! I hate rats, man. I hate, hate, hate rats!”
“Just shoot ‘em, Dan!”
“I can’t! These damn arms wrapped around the bottom of my bow!”
I remembered how freaked out Dan got when we were fighting the rats at the undead castle. Now, he was essentially food waiting to be gnawed on, with no ability to fight back.
Sure enough, a pack of rats—Undead Rats, that is—began to move toward us. Their bones creaked against each other as they clicked and clacked across the floor toward our restrained bodies.
I couldn’t watch as Dan started going into mini-convulsions. The rats were approaching all of us, but they got to Dan first. As soon they started climbing up his legs he let out a very unmanly scream.
When I finally looked over, I saw them taking chunks out of Dan and he looked almost ready to pass out. The Undead were literally consuming him. If we didn’t do something quick, we were all going to die.
I looked down at my restraints, and then looked back at the rats. Undead, just like the arms holding us. Maybe. At this point I was willing to try anything.
“Allister, can you cast?”
“Sure, but it will take a while before I can kill all of those rats with my spell.”
“Forget that, I want you to cast it on yourself.”
“I don’t think that will work, Alex.”
“I’m hoping that it will dislodge those damn arms and maybe have an effect on the Death Mage. I mean if you destroy someone’s spell, that should have a negative reaction, right?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone destroy a spell. I’ve seen them wear off or be dispelled, but never destroyed.”
I was completely reaching here, but I was going off the knowledge I had from other gaming. In another game I played, before becoming a full-time seller, I was a spell caster that specialized in high damage spells. Because I would end up doing so much damage, I often drew aggro, as did the others who played the same character type. That game provided the players with a shield the player could cast on themselves, and it would mitigate any damage that came at the player, up to a certain amount.
The problem with the shield was that if it were destroyed by damage, the person who cast the spell would get a moment of backlash and be stunned for a second or two. If the caster dispelled it on their own and recast the shield, there was no problem. In the end, I stopped using the shield since the backlash got me killed more times than the shield helped. Instead, I managed my aggro better.
It was this rational that drove me now and why I was nodding my head at Jason.
“At this point, what have we got to lose?”
Without a further word, Jason began casting his spell. It was a quick cast but long reset spell.
Within a moment, I knew that at least part of my plan had succeeded. Jason was no longer held by the skeleton arms, and the bones had flown apart.
I quickly looked over to the Death Mage, and the second part of my plan seemed to have had some success as well. The destruction of the spell hadn’t incapacitated the Mage as I
had hoped, but he did look a bit befuddled. And a little worried. Also, the Rats had stopped advancing as quickly and no longer seemed to be feasting on Dan as much, either.
“As soon as you can, hit Wayne with the spell!”
“You dare to fight back? Against me?” the Death Mage bellowed out yet again.
“This guy is a serious douche.”
“Agreed, Wayne. You know what to do. As soon as you are free smack him with that hammer. I don’t care what happens to Wayne, Allister. The only spell you throw is Banish Undead until we are all free. Sorry, Wayne.”
“No need to apologize man, I know my role.”
And right after that, Jason was able to cast another Banish Undead. The destruction of the spell, and then Wayne’s attacks, knocked the Death Mage back against the wall. The reaction from the second spell being destroyed was having an increasing effect on the Mage’s abilities. At this point, he wasn’t casting any more spells. And the Rats fell from Dan.
“Hit Dan next, Allister!” I yelled to Jason. “When you are free, Dan, you are on extermination duty!”
“With pleasure, Alex.” Dan said, albeit with an extremely shaky voice.
The same phenomenon occurred when Jason destroyed the arms holding Dan. The Death Mage stumbled noticeably, and he didn’t try to throw any spells at us. I obviously didn’t need to tell Jason what to do next. As soon as his spell was ready, I would be freed to join the fight.
I’m always amazed at the complexity of the thought process that goes into these mobs. I mean, I know the AI personally, so I know how complex it is, but situations like this always raise my level of respect.
I say this because the mob, realizing what was going on, actually cast dispel on his own magic. I looked over and saw that the arms holding Broham were gone, as were mine. In this way, the Death Mage wouldn’t be hit with another mind-bending blast from his spell being destroyed. The complexity of a program that can realize a situation and devise an appropriate solution was astonishing, to say the least.
I was sure I would think more about it later. Right then, I was intent on keeping this douche from ever talking again.
“Allister, have Banish up and loaded. If you see any of us get wrapped up by those arms again, you hit us with it. Even if you are casting a heal! Stop and just blast the arms.”
Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II Page 35