World Tree Online: The Order of Epic Grinders: 4th Dive

by M. A. Carlson

  I, and several others, laughed good naturedly when Basher called out in protest, “Not cool, Olaf. Not cool!”

  “I’m just messing with you Basher,” Olaf said with a laugh. “Sorry for the teasing, mate. We got a two-handed ax, mystic quality. Drakesbane. You want it?”

  “More than you know, yes!” Basher shouted, rushing up to the front of the crowd.

  Basher Slasher equipped it immediately and held it up for everyone to see. It was a double-crescent moon battleax engraved with fire breathing dragons on either side. “I’ll top your damage next time, Bye-bye,” he boasted happily.

  “You’re welcome to try,” I called back. I honestly hoped he succeeded. My damage was only as high as it was because I had the room to maneuver. Inside the tower, I couldn’t guarantee that would be the case. The more the people with us who improved their equipment, skills, and spells, the better it would be for all of us.

  “Next up, healers, pay attention,” Olaf said. “We’ve got mystic quality Life Spring Robes, bonuses to Nature based healing. Bloomin, Teak?”

  “Let Bloomin have it,” Teak said. “My healing is holy based.”

  Well, that confirmed that. It would seem Teak was definitely a Paladin, though I supposed he might still be a Priest.

  “I’ll take it,” Bloomin said.

  After that, a dagger went to Gomez and a one-handed ax went to Heavy. A pair of wooden boots of all things went to Rock, which he was overly excited to get his hands on and his feet in.

  “Dragon Wrath Wand,” Olaf said next, causing every spellcaster to speak up at once, Pwn and Icyhot being the loudest of them. “Alright, alright, calm down, all of you. This gives bonuses to fire damage. Icyhot, is your steam still considered fire damage?”

  “No, but the stats,” Icyhot tried to protest.

  “And Pwn, same question, is your void fire still considered fire damage?” Olaf asked.

  Pwn ground his teeth, eventually admitting, “No.”

  “Right, then who does fire damage?” Olaf asked.

  “I do,” Icy Frost said.

  Olaf studied her for a moment before looking to Baby for help.

  Baby answered, “It’s true. Icy Frost is a Fire Mage and Fiery Blaze is an Ice Mage.”

  Olaf chuckled. “That’s clever. Alright, it’s yours Icy . . . Frost, not Icyhot. Dang, that’s going to get confusing.”

  “Last bit of equipment. And I won’t lie, this one confuses me to no end. “Cloak of the Zephyr, mystic quality, but I couldn’t tell you anything else. It’s all question marks from there.”

  Olaf may not have had any idea what it was, but I felt like I did. Was it possible the loot took into account my new title? There was only one way to find out. “I think that’s for me,” I said.

  “You sure?” Olaf asked.

  “Yeah, pretty sure,” I said, making my way to my friend and the white and blue cloak draped over his arm.

  “Alright mate, but you should know, there are some really nice skill scrolls to come,” Olaf tried to warn me that there might be something there that I would want more.

  I took the cloak from him and said my thanks, moving off to the side to take a look at it.

  Back:

  Cloak of the Zephyr

  +100 Armor

  Bonus Stats: The Cloak of the Zephyr is a Unique item that can only be worn by a Demigod of the Babylonian pantheon. Reduces the cost of Active Skill Effects by 50% for 'Zephyr of the Open Field' skill. Increases Passive Skill Effects by 50% for ‘Zephyr of the Open Field’ skill – +50-Dexterity, +50-Stamina – Unbreakable – Soulbound

  My mind blanked as I stared at the properties of the cloak. I heard Olaf in the background handing out scrolls for skills and scrolls for spells, settling the occasional argument, or congratulating one person or another. I couldn’t have cared less. I mean, I did care, I just . . . didn’t care at that moment.

  It wasn’t until Rose put a hand on my shoulder that I tuned in again.

  “You okay, Jack?” Rose asked.

  I nodded. “That cloak, it’s a unique item,” I whispered trying to hide some of my excitement. I didn’t need anyone around us to get jealous.

  Rose whispered back. “What’s does it do?”

  I told her and she just grinned at me before taking my arm. With large, exaggerated steps, she guided me toward the now open gates to the Tower of Reksoni. Just inside the entrance was a swirling black miasma that marked the entrance to the raid dungeon.

  Chapter 31

  “Heavy, on your right,” Rose shouted in warning to the other tank.

  Heavy turned right just in time to raise his shield to block the overhand swing of a mace from another , one of two that just patrolled into the area we were already fighting in.

  “Where do they keep coming from?” Icyhot complained.

  “Any side tunnel they want to,” Pwn snarked back.

  The Tower of Reksoni was a honeycomb of tunnels and side tunnels that made it something of a maze. A deadly maze filled with wandering skeletal Dragonkin Guards, Clerics, Footmen, and Arcanists, usually in pairs, though occasionally we would see three of them together.

  Unfortunately, this time we were already fighting a and a when the new pair wandered in. The Guard which Heavy was just introduced to, and a .

  “Silence the Cleric!” Olaf shouted with urgency.

  It was sheer luck I had line of sight on the Cleric. I cast ‘Heavenly Blade’ pinning the Cleric and preventing it from casting what equated to healing magic for the walking calcium. “CC’d!” I shouted, letting Olaf and everyone else know it was Crowd Controlled. Then I added, “Fifteen seconds.”

  “Get that Arcanist dead,” Olaf ordered, firing his hand-cannons as quickly as he could.

  “Die in a fire,” Pwn shouted, sending an orb of black fire across the hall to hit the Dragonkin in the face and finally killing it. He hissed excitedly, “Yes!”

  “Good, Cleric next,” Olaf said. “Rose, pick it up.”

  Rose blurred across the corridor, smacking shield first into the healer and knocking it off its feet where it was suddenly at the mercy of her shields.

  Thankfully, the corridors that made up the honeycomb maze were wide enough for us to comfortably work in. Less so that they were only about twice as tall as a man, meaning my jumping days were pretty much done for this part of the Raid. However, both the height and width were perfect for the Dragonkin.

  The walking calcium, otherwise known as Skeletal Dragonkin were a cross between a dragon and a humanoid. I’m not sure which humanoid they crossed with, but the result was a humanoid dragon that stood about one and half times the height of a man. I wish there were more to tell you about what Dragonkin once looked like, but the flesh had long rotted away from these monstrosities, leaving only yellow and charred bones behind. I’ll admit, the glowing orange eyes inside the dragon skulls were a little creepy. As if that weren’t enough, they were armed and armored with rusty equipment and seemed to have retained some of their skills and spells, which was more than enough.

  I ran past Rose and the Cleric, spinning as I passed and striking with my spear. I was definitely missing my ability to get into the air to deliver some seriously punishing damage.

  Basher slid in just next to me, his new ax cleaving into the Cleric dealing significant cutting damage. Seeing the Cleric’s HP suddenly drop by 10%, he boasted, “Ha-ha, I told you!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I laughed good naturedly. I was glad his damage increased so significantly. I kept up my attack, switching between ‘Divine Lance’ and one of my more specialized subskills to keep up the melee and spell damage boosts, though I needed to be much more careful now to avoid friendly fire damage.

  Eventually the Cleric was put back to rest. After that, we focused on the already weakened spear wielding Footman and finally the Guard was dropped.

  “More scrap
metal,” someone complained, kicking the rusted armor, and sending some of the bones skittering across the floor.

  “Everyone, take ten,” Olaf announced, seeing the mounting frustration, and giving everyone some time to cool off, refresh their mana and stuff like that.

  “Hey,” Rose said, plopping down next to me.

  “Hey,” I said back, giving her a tired smile. Unfortunately, Olaf’s break didn’t really give me time to rest. I was busy working on a map of the Raid Dungeon, or at least what we’d uncovered so far. At first, I tried to draw the map as a standard two-dimensional map, but due to the regular changes in elevation, and the way the tunnels seemed to twist around each other, it just wasn’t working. I ended up trying to render it in 3D . . . by hand. It worked much better, but the map was looking more and more like an anthill.

  Eagle came up a few minutes later, holding a map book similar to my own. We’d been exchanging maps whenever we could. “Hey, Bye-bye,” he greeted before sitting down opposite Rose and holding out his map book. “The 3D thing works a lot better.”

  I compared his map to my own and they were mostly the same. Then I saw something. A gap. Somewhere in the center of this hive of tunnels and dead ends there was a giant hole without any tunnels. “Hey, you notice this dead zone?” I asked, showing Eagle my map.

  “I didn’t,” Eagle said, looking from his map to my own. “Hey, you mapped a side tunnel here,” he pointed to a spot on his own map that showed a continuous tunnel where I showed a small offshoot that aimed roughly toward the central dead zone.

  “I think that’s where we need to go,” I said, updating parts of my map where Eagle’s looked more complete as he did the same using mine.

  Once Eagle finished updating, he closed his book and said, “I’ll go let Olaf know then start heading that way. See if I can scout it out.”

  “Good luck,” I said, closing and putting away my own book of maps.

  “You have so much more patience than I do,” Rose commented, yawning.

  I looked at the in-game clock and stifled my own yawn. It was almost 4:30, nearly twelve hours after we left the Flatlands Camp. We’d been trying to clear these tunnels for almost four hours and didn’t feel like we were getting any closer. It didn’t help with all the change of directions the tunnels threw at us. I don’t know how anyone would have been able to complete this Raid Dungeon without a cartographer.

  A little more than 10 minutes later, Eagle was back from scouting and Olaf was ordering us to get moving again.

  The offshoot looked like any other offshoot, roughly hewn walls with a steady decline. Unlike the other tunnels, this one seemed to be going straight. After maybe a hundred feet, we were hit with an unexpected wave of heat. As we continued onward, it kept getting hotter until the tunnel suddenly opened up into a giant, dimly lit hollow. It was maybe two or three hundred yards across and just as deep. In the center was a black tower that ran from the ceiling just above us all the way down. There were no windows on the tower. No bridges from the tower to the outer wall where we had gathered. There was a single stairway wrapping around the outer rock walls leading all the way to the bottom, which was where we thought we needed to go.

  “That is a lot of forges,” Olaf said, drawing my attention to what awaited us at the bottom. There were dozens of Dragonkin banging on anvils, making what looked like weapons and armor of a much higher quality than what the Skeletal Dragonkin had worn so far. I also counted a dozen drakes being used to heat the forges. It seemed the only light was from the soft orange glow of the forges, only growing slightly bright for a brief moment when one of the drakes breathed fire. As I looked closer, it appeared as though the drakes were chained down. That was when I saw the largest Dragonkin yet. It stood a head and shoulders taller than the smithing Dragonkins. It looked like he stopped at every forge to crack the whip. Literally. It literally cracked a whip, striking the drakes and Dragonkin alike.

  “So unfair,” Pwn complained. “Jacko, I hate you.”

  “What?” I asked confused. I genuinely didn’t know what possible reason he had for being upset.

  “You get to play jumping bean again. There goes any hope of the rest of us taking top damage dealer,” Pwn complained.

  “Hey, he might be resistant to physical damage. Do you see that armor?” Icyhot asked, pointing at the thick plate mail armor the larger Skeletal Dragonkin was wearing.

  Pwn hummed in thought, “Maybe . . . I suppose we’ll just need to wait and see.”

  I stifled a chuckle. I didn’t think I should tell them my damage was all holy attributed, regardless if it was spell or physical damage.

  The stairs were deserted, no offshoots or secondary pathways to be explored either. Just the long, empty stairway leading down to a small army of undead smiths, drakes, and one massive Dragonkin boss. Olaf stopped the group about 30-yards from the bottom to reassess now that we could better see what we were up against.

  An was pinned down in front of a furnace, breathing fire until it looked exhausted. It would rest for a minute then do it again. It didn’t look upset. It didn’t fight against its restraints. It just . . . carried out its task as lifelessly as it was. I would have bet that when it had been alive, it fought against its bonds, trying to resist its enslavement. I made a promise to myself then that I would put those poor creatures out of their misery.

  As for the that worked the forge and the that worked the nearby anvil. They would die.

  There wasn’t much else to see, however, Olaf decided to wait for the boss to patrol past us. The , was twice the height of the already tall Dragonkin manning the smithing station. Olaf wanted to see if it had any other visible weapons, which it didn’t. Only the whip looped and hanging at its waist. It was an odd weapon considering how heavily armored the massive Dragonkin was.

  “I think we can clear the forges one at a time,” Olaf said. “Going to need to be careful though. I don’t want to risk pulling the boss or the rest of the room. Or worse, all of them at once.”

  All of them would have guaranteed we wiped. The boss and some of the smiths might have been enough to wipe us out as well. No, slow and careful was definitely the smarter way to go. That said, it would probably take a few hours to clear them out without pulling the boss.

  “Alright, Elara, can you make the shot from here?” Olaf asked.

  Elara stuttered and asked, “You want the group just below us?”

  “No, bottom of the stairs,” Olaf replied.

  At the bottom of the stairs there was a gap in the forges and smiths that led to a large double door in the central tower. Now that we were closer, I was able to get a better look at the tower. Where the tunnels above were roughly hewn and uneven, lacking anything resembling careful construction, the black tower in front of us was exactly the opposite. The stone was smooth and carefully constructed, it looked a lot like Micaela’s stonework on the Order House. It was completely seamless as far as I could see.

  “Think we can just sneak past?” Heath asked, motioning to the door.

  Several players looked taken aback by the suggestion, but only Pwn and Icyhot were willing to say anything.

  Pwn asked first, “And miss out on that loot?”

  To which Icyhot added, “I think not.”

  Heath shrugged, “I was just asking. No need to get upset, mates.”

  “Anyway,” Oaf interrupted. “Elara, you up for this?”

  The Elven girl nodded and ran ahead, trying to keep away from the edge lest she be spotted by one of the groups from below. I watched her pull back on the bow and release. She didn’t even wait to see if her arrow hit before she was running.

  I tracked the arrow through the air. It flew true striking a .

  The smith and forger both roared and took a few steps toward the stairs when there was a loud clang of metal stopping them in their
tracks. That’s when I saw the long black chains running from one of their legs to either the forge or the anvil.

  At first, I was quite happy to see they were chained, it meant they should be easier to fight. Then I heard another group of roars. And another. And another until all the forgers and smiths were roaring and the was barreling around the tower and running toward us.

  “Tanks!” Olaf roared, urging Rose, Rock, and Heavy to move up to meet the boss. “Everyone else, take up positions and wait on my order to attack.”

  There was a bit of scramble after that order. No one was really in position as we thought we would have time to deal with the Dragonkin before fighting the boss.

  Rose met the Devourer at the bottom of the stairs, quickly gaining aggro. She hit it with one shield then the other. With practiced ease, she raised her shields and blocked a short series of attacks from the whip, but the damage was negligible. It was less than the earlier skeletal Dragonkin dealt back in the tunnels.

  “Ha, not a boss,” Pwn laughed.

  The Devourer seemed to hear him when he suddenly roared.

  Paralyzing Roar – Freeze all who hear this roar for 15-seconds.

  And everyone who heard that roar, felt the effect.

  The Devourer kicked Rose with his bony foot, sending her into the nearest wall where her HP nearly zeroed out. Then he surprised me when he ran to the nearest forge and anvil team where he roared and pointed to the forge and then to the anvil, where he laid his whip.

  The Forger quickly pulled a hot piece of metal shaped like a spiked caltrop out of the fire and set it near the tip of the whip on the anvil. The Smith then picked up the caltrop, roaring in pain as its HP steadily dropped. With practiced ease, the Smith threaded the whip through the caltrop. Then with a couple hammer blows, the caltrop clasped around the whip.

  The Devourer roared in approval then suddenly brought his fist down on the Smith, killing it instantly. It then held a hand over the top of the bones. A sickly green light engulfed the bones, causing them to rise and turn into powder before being absorbed by the Devourer, making its bones grow both thicker and longer. The boss then turned its glowing hand on the Forger, repeating the process.