Hope Engine

by Andrew Lynch

  I continued pushing to the front lines. Maybe there were different resist rates for rooting AOE spells and direct damage spells.

  I was at the melee line now. Tanks and melee DPS were intermingled, with the fast and nimble classes running and jumping in amazing acrobatic feats, while the slow and heavy specs cut swathes through these shadowless foes.

  The first one I saw was small and relatively harmless looking. A Goblin, the nameplate told me. He’d just dodged under a Warrior’s attack, and was running towards me. My Shadow Skin was up, so I was ready to make this happen.

  I cast a Shadow Bolt at the Goblin, and he responded by stumbling on a rock, making my spell miss by a hair’s breadth.

  It had a crude club in one hand that, quite frankly, I hesitated to call a club because it was just a stick. Apart from that, it also had a loincloth. That was it. I was going to get wrecked by a near naked, poor excuse for comedy relief, mob.

  It let out a high pitched wail, its club now above its head. I had time for one more shot. I cast Shadow Bolt again and… hit!

  A damage number appeared above the Goblin’s head. “1 (-36)”

  Direct damage spells do not have a better chance of avoiding a MOBs resistance. Good to know. Wish I’d known earlier.

  The Goblin was no more than a few steps away, and I was sad that I’d lose my Dirty Robe, but also resigned to it.

  The Goblin tripped again, but this time actually fell over. I can’t say I was hopeful, but I wasn’t going to pass up such a blatant opportunity. I cast Shadow Bolt again, taking my time to aim straight at its head.

  The arm went back, the words spewed from my mouth, and… “4 (-36)”

  Still nowhere near enough damage to save me, but it did provide useful information. The Goblin wasn’t resisting a percentage of my attack, it had a flat resistance rate. It made it nearly impossible for me to kill now, but when I was hitting harder, it wouldn’t scale.

  The Goblin’s health bar started dropping. I couldn’t see why, but suddenly it was down to half health. Three seconds later, and it was dead. Huh? I didn’t have time to check the combat log to really figure it out, but before I needed to, I saw what had happened. The green toxic goo from Porath had seeped into the ground and had not only rooted the Goblin, but also damaged him. Maybe that spell was just a heavily modified Corrupted Tendrils! I couldn’t wait to get stuck into those spell mods at level ten.

  I received a negligible amount of experience, which I guessed meant that experience was given based on effectiveness, not just participation, in a fight.

  I moved over to the Goblin and brought the loot screen up. He had two blank containers, one being a “goblin pouch”, which was normal and made sense, while the other was “heart”. Three items – club, loincloth, and minor shadow gem. I took the club from his pouch, and the shadow gem from his heart. I didn’t plan on using the club, but maybe it would be useful back in my village. The Minor Shadow Gem wasn’t revealing any details about itself, but it was a small black crystal, so how could that be a bad thing. I left the loincloth. I knew this was only a game, but I was pretty sure I would have taken poison damage just for picking it up.

  I closed the loot window, but stayed crouched over the body. How odd. It wasn’t just that these MOBs didn’t cast a shadow on the ground, but they also didn’t cast a shadow on themselves. It’s like the light engine completely ignored them. It made the Goblin look fake. Like a poorly rendered character in a 90s video game, just with more polygons.

  My first thought was that whoever named these guys was an idiot, but my second thought was that whatever these were, they weren’t meant to be. There was no order to the enemy. It was like every MOB that had this random glitch gathered together and formed an army of broken things.

  Of course, I didn’t really know anything about them. Maybe they had a leader. Maybe Angie knew everything and would tell me that this was an army that absorbed all darkness, hence no shadows, and it was all completely above board and not weird.

  All great questions for another time, because while I was busy examining the shadowless, but very bumpy face of a dead Goblin, the press of the Eastern Shadow MOBs was closing in. I saw a tank get overwhelmed by giant snakes that worked together, constricting his limbs before one jumped into his mouth. To my right a half dozen melee DPS were burned, frozen, and melted by a three headed chimera. I heard a scream from behind and saw a healer pinned into the ground by a giant splint of bone – a makeshift javelin from some horrible ranged enemy. I just barely heard someone shout over the din of combat ‘Woah, one shot dude!’ followed by ‘I’m not healing you if you’re just going to stand in the fire you–’ I didn’t have a mature filter set, but what the guy said next was so visceral, creative, and multilingual, that I almost wished I had.

  A rabid wolf darted around a tank who was too busy with the other six MOBs attacking him, and spotted me. Quite why he spotted me before the melee around him, I didn’t know. Maybe my low level did silly things to aggro priorities. It pawed at the ground, almost like it was a bull, and ran towards me. I cast my Shadow Bolt and landed a hit, making a depressing number appear above its head. “0 (-32). Unlike with the Goblin, I assumed that due to the low damage I inflicted, the resistance this time was the total damage I did, and not the wolf’s maximum resistance. So, I was pretty boned.

  There was nothing left for me to do. It was okay. I’d had small ticks of experience going throughout the battle as part of the raid group, and I wasn’t too attached to my jugular, so I was ready for this.

  As the wolf leapt directly at my throat and crashed into me, I didn’t feel the crushing jaws as I’d expected. I took a tiny amount of damage, but lying on the floor now, I was remarkably unravaged. I opened my eyes, and saw the wolf no longer had a head. Well, it did, obviously, but it had been severed and launched several metres across the battlefield by a giant throwing axe.

  The blue number of my experience ticked over, and I glowed in a flash of brilliant white radiance.

  “Level 4”

  Oh. Nifty!

  Thank you, random Warrior dude. I noted that fur without shadows looked really weird, and then pushed the corpse off me. A quick loot only provided another minor shadow gem from the wolf’s “heart”.

  The NPC that had officially taken charge of the players before the fight shouted, ‘Pull in! Tighten up, there’s too many gaps!’

  The chaos I was seeing wasn’t localised to me, then. Tanks pulled shields out of the ground, released elemental bulwarks, and deactivated mystical bracelets, slowly inching their way backwards.

  I overheard a group of casters behind me shouting to each other. ‘This is bullshit. Fucker fucked us.’

  ‘What do you expect? Dude’s like level 1000 or something stupid. He doesn’t care.’

  ‘Yeah yeah. I only brought some of my throwaway gear, so it’s no biggie, but still.’

  ‘Asshole’s gonna hole ass. It’s the Tulgathan way.’

  I moved away from the looted wolf, heading back to where the line of healers was. A thin glowing circle appeared on the floor around me, five metres wide. The edges of the circle began to crack the ground allowing magma to seep out.

  My brain kicked into gear and realised I was in the centre of an AOE attack that was still in the indicator phase. All big attacks had an indicator time to let people get out of the way. I hadn’t seen one before, but this was ticking all the boxes – and reminded me from the tutorial that a red outline to my screen meant danger.

  The ground beneath my feet split, and I just managed to jump out of the way before magma engulfed where my feet should have been. Again the ground broke where I stood, so I leapt again, and again. A final leap and I hit the dirt, but luckily across the border and back on the safe side. Just as I landed, the magma filled the circle and bubbled furiously. Ehh. A bit of an underwhelming spell effect. It could have–

  The ground exploded upwards, and the circle of danger doubled in size. I scrambled to my feet and sprinted towards
the next area indicator as globs of hurled magma dropped around me. I felt something hit my back, and it forced me to my knees. I saw the crystalised shadow of my Shadow Skin shatter and dissipate into nothing. Okay, one more hit and I would be toast. A slew of heat-related puns ran through my mind, but I made sure I wouldn’t use any. I was too cool for that.

  Again, the ground beneath me cracked open and magma poured out, but I was close to safety now, and a few moments of frantic crawling got me over the line. After a few seconds, there was no explosion, just a slow bubbling of magma as the ground was subsumed.

  I recast Shadow Skin, and got to my feet. The spell effect of the magma was now a permanent feature in the middle of the player’s raid. It was an annoyance, but nothing more. Something to avoid for the tanks and the melee as they pulled back.

  The boss NPC shouted again. ‘Everyone, hold the ring! Don’t let any distractions through. Clear it out!’

  I took a moment to process the orders. Okay, so the tanks had moved in enough and we needed to hold back the waves of the Eastern Shadow. Easy enough. Don’t let any of the enemy past the tanks, well that was just good tanking etiquette, but why call them distractions? Clear it out? Clear what out?

  I looked around and saw the Warlock, Porath, hobbling his way to the front lines. He’d taken a hit at some point and hadn’t been healed. I figured he knew best, so I copied him, and headed for the tanks.

  I heard a rumbling behind me. I knew what it was. I would bet money I knew what it was. I turned back and saw that the pool of magma, now a full fifteen metres across, was not a pool of magma. The magma had been drained to make room for something else. There was a nameplate above the empty hole that read “Child of Light”. The nameplate wasn’t the standard colour for a MOB. This was black text on a golden background.

  Elite!

  Chapter 15: Boss Fight

  ‘Let him through!’ our NPC leader shouted.

  I looked to where the crowd parted.

  Hursh was here along with the rest of the command group I’d seen when I talked to him. I hadn’t thought to pay attention before, but I checked his nameplate now. “Hursh Dunning. 658”

  Woah. That was a ridiculous level. I needed to find out if there was a hard level cap. Lots of questions for Angie when I returned. Until then, I had an awesome, high-level, elite fight to watch. It wasn’t like I was really helping out much with the horde, so I felt justified in enjoying these front row seats to my future gameplay.

  Hursh and his four bodyguards fanned out around the magma hole, which was now making some very worrying noises. They all wore tattered brown cloaks, covering their armour and weapons.

  The ground shook and I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet. Everyone around me had the same problem, and a few that were engaged in combat fell and were overrun by the Eastern Shadow. Absently I cast another Corrupting Tendrils, but this time near one of the tanks. A few trapped MOBs couldn’t hurt.

  “Corrupted Tendrils hits 18 MOBs”

  “12 MOBs resist Corrupted Tendrils”

  While still disappointing, that was the most MOBs I’d managed to root so far. Nice. Anyway, back to watching the bad asses.

  Magma and rock erupted into the air, and I dodged a chunk that would have taken my head clean off. Once I had picked myself up off the floor, again, the elite had emerged. A fifteen metre hole hadn’t been big enough. This thing was huge. It was basically just a giant snake with its body still coming out of the hole in the ground. Okay, it had no shadows, and glowed with a radiant light, and it’s skin was caked in magma, with fiery vents erupting flame. But it was still basically just a snake. At least, that was how I had to view it to stop myself from running away.

  The five heroes threw off their tattered cloaks and drew their weapons. Hursh had a large double handed sword. One of the NPCs was a javelin thrower, while the other three had shields and short swords. They were all kitted out in the same animal hides as the rest of the army, except instead of the browns, greys, and beiges of the rest of them, they wore black skins and furs, and their weapons were a gleaming steel instead of dull grey.

  I almost fucking squealed I was so excited to watch this. Shit was about to go down, and I was right next to the action. I wouldn’t miss a thing. I was pumped!

  The Child of Light began the fight by vomiting a pool of what I thought was fire, but turned out to be light. A pool of light. Just like with me and “shadow”, it had a theme, and was sticking to it.

  Amusingly, if this was real life, I would probably also start a fight by puking.

  Two of the shield maidens advanced to the creature’s left, locking shields to create a wall, while the third soloed the right. The javeliner… javelineer? Dude with a throwing spear, stayed well behind the shield wall on the left. As the NPCs engaged, a soft white glow linked their shields to the Child of Light. Just like I’d seen with Koif in the tutorial, this was aggro. However, they must have modded their skills, because each shield also had a second beam of soft light that ran to Hursh. I didn’t instantly know what that was until numbers started ticking over his head. Yellow numbers began ticking rapidly at Hursh’s feet. “0 (-980)”. Each shield was healing him, but because he was at full health, it showed up like a resistance to damage would.

  Numbers started ticking from everyone’s head, but the healing of the shield maidens seemed to keep everyone at a stable health level. The Child of Light hit hard but slow, and didn’t seem to be doing too much – auto attacking against the single shield maiden on the right, and the pool of light spewing forth from its hole that was slowly damaging everyone. Equally, the Child of Light’s health pool was basically static, having only dropped 1%.

  Hursh reached back and drew his sword. It was easily as big as him, and thick enough that he probably called it Buster. This wasn’t a smooth movement, though. It was a full body jerk and twist. When Buster hit the floor, it was clear Hursh couldn’t control it as he almost fell forward into the plume of snow and dust that had been thrown up from the impact of sword on ground.

  Frankly, it just seemed impractical.

  Hursh gripped the hilt, which was as long as his entire arm, with both hands, and set his feet. He drew in a deep breath, and I could see small red particles being sucked into his mouth. He let them out with a massive roar that was so loud, I felt it should have given me a debuff.

  Just under his nameplate, a small icon appeared. It had the same symbol that I’d seen next to the Strength stat. When I focused, I could select it with my vision, and expand it. “Strength +350”.

  Now, I was no mathmagician, but with a little bit of guesswork, his Strength stat had to be over 1,000. He was level 658, so even if a single stat point a level held true, as a warrior he’d be dumping into Strength – maybe Health too – so he had to have a natural Strength of at least 300, right? Plus the buff, he was at 650. Depending on his actual stat distribution and his gear, he could probably bench press a mountain. Or at least, I guessed that’s what 1,000 strength felt like. With my amazing 1 point in strength, that gave me regular, kind of weak, human strength. I could lift a stick, but I’d struggle with a heavy log or rock. I didn’t know what level of Strength I’d need to be able to have a noticeable difference. I needed a notepad to remember all the stuff I wanted to ask Angie.

  While the question of “just how strong is 1,000 Strength” remained, it did have the very noticeable effect on Hursh of letting him pick up Buster. One handed. Then twirl it like a baton. And finally hold it behind him like he was about to do some crazy anime jump onto the Child of Light’s head.

  He didn’t do that, although something told me that his thighs of steel would have no problem launching him that far. He ran, covering the distance almost quicker than I could see. I mean, he didn’t actually become a blur, but if I’d had a particularly long blink, I would have missed it.

  Hursh took a mighty swing at the Child of Light, and finally the elite’s health moved 2%. Now, 2% didn’t sound like much, but it was 2% from a b
asic attack.

  The Child of Light reared back and swung its body in a wide arc, hitting everyone in range. That included Hursh, his bodyguards, and one unlucky healer who wasn’t paying attention. The bodyguards and Hursh took damage but were quickly topped up by the shield maidens. The healer ragdolled into a rock and got splatted. Interestingly, a few nearby players sprinted to the dead healer’s body and looted it. Ooh, now that was interesting. Could anyone loot your corpse?

  Back at the fight, the Child of Light was now clearly losing, and something had taken him down to 55% health. It had probably been really cool, but I had been looking at a dead guy. Oops.

  Hursh did a fancy looking spin with Buster, and the elite’s health dropped to 47%. Hursh jumped back and planted his sword in the ground. He made a casting animation with his hands, shouted “Formation execute!”, and a whole bunch of stuff happened all at once.

  The shield maidens changed from a passive blocking and hitting pattern, to shields glowing with light. These were then promptly stabbed into the closest fleshy surface they could find, and the maidens ran away. The javelin guy, in essence, threw more javelins. They were bolts of lightning and cracks of thunder sounded with every throw, and he had a crazy fire rate, but still, it was basically just throwing more javelins. Hursh, however, did something that probably needed me to have a higher perception skill, because I was a bit lost. He lunged forward, grabbing Buster on the way, and then turned into a blur, stopping at random points around the elite’s huge body, swiping with a sword that was now wreathed in blue ice, and then moving on to the next spot faster than I could see.

  This went on for five long seconds. Then the glowing shields exploded, the Child of Light’s health dropped to 0% and all around where Hursh had been cutting, the top half of the elite just… slid off, like it had been cut so cleanly all the way through that there was only the surface tension of its own blood holding it together. The head shook the ground when it landed, and much cheering was had. I joined in enthusiastically.