Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (22 page)

Everything seemed to be going fine, even easy. Sure, the mob was hitting hard, but nothing we couldn’t face. When we approached 75 percent on the mob, we all braced for the AoE we knew was coming.

We were wrong.

At 75 percent the Master did in fact cast a spell, but it wasn’t an AoE that effected the group. Instead, the Master yelled out “Rise my Children and Destroy our Enemies!”

Four Earth Dwellers spawned next to the Master and began attacking all of us. This was totally unexpected. Instead of one mob, we were now fighting five. They were not a high level, Green to my group, but Blue to our team mates, meaning they were level 11. I looked around the room quickly and came up with a strategy that I yelled out to the raid.

“Dan, aggro one and kite it! Wayne, Bash one and keep the aggro. Jenny, off-Tank a third. Tim, Charm the fourth! Gary, you and I will take the one that Wayne aggros and kill it. Then we move to Jenny’s, then Dan’s, then Tim’s last. Keep Wayne alive everyone!”

We moved accordingly, taking down the mobs quicker than the ones we fought previously. Much of this was due to Gary’s new knuckles and the crazy damage he was dealing. Thankfully, when they turned on Gary this time, the damage wasn’t huge thanks to their lower level, but he was still taking damage. Once Jenny’s was dead I told her to sit and regenerate her mana. I know she wanted to fight, but she was going to be crucial in making sure Tim stayed alive when his mob was un-Charmed.

We ran around the room following Dan’s mob, attacking it as we went as it kept trying to get to Dan, pissed that Dan kept snaring it and running it around. Through the whole thing Jenny did as she was told and regenerated her mana.

Once we killed Dan’s mob, we all ran at Tim’s mob except for Jason and Wayne. Jason was responsible, solely, for keeping Wayne alive. I told Dan to stand down on shooting Tim’s mob and chain cast his weak heal on Tim, as he was going to need all the heals he could get. Once we were ready, Jenny broke the Charm by attacking and immediately began casting a heal on Tim. Gary and I started lighting into the mob, while Dan, Jenny, and Kaitlin cast heals on Tim. Tim almost didn’t make it.

Once we had dealt with the four extra mobs we went back to the Master. Except this time I had Jenny heal herself up to full, and regen her mana. Wayne was surviving, but was using a lot of Jason and Kaitlin’s mana. We slowly whittled the mob down to 50 percent and everyone stood up for the next wave of mobs. At 50 percent we were informed of another spell.

This was not the same spell we encountered at the 75 percent mark. This was another AoE but it was a direct damage one. We were all effected, though our level of Earth resistance determined how much we got hit for. As such, my group got hit less than Jenny’s. We still took a pounding, though. I lost 25 percent of my health from that one hit. Dan and Jason got hit for around the same as we all had a similar constitution. Thankfully, Wayne had spent lots of his skill points on his Constitution and he only lost 10 percent of his health.

Our teammates got thrashed. Tim, being a caster and focusing most of his skill points on Intelligence was knocked down from 100 percent health to 20 percent health. Jenny was closer to us in damage, but Gary and Kaitlin both took almost 50 percent damage.

The worst part though was that the AI noted that Tim went down to really low hit points. And acted accordingly.

Before any of us could react, the Master turned from Wayne, took two steps toward Tim, and proceeded to beat him dead. All in the span of three seconds.

“Fuck! Is he dead-dead or only mostly dead?” Dan asked. No one had any idea what he was talking about. Tim was most certainly dead-dead.

Knowing we didn’t have time to lament the passing of Tim, I started issuing orders. “Dan! Try to land a snare on the Master!” I yelled. “Wayne, if it lands, you kite that big fucker around the room. Everyone needs time to heal and regen!”

I could tell Wayne didn’t like this idea, as it was akin to running from the mob, but the strategist in him saw the wisdom. Dan’s first attempt failed, but his second attempt landed. Wayne started running and the mob followed.

“Dan you keep snaring until it turns and starts coming for you. Your Snare lasts what, 30 seconds? At that point we sick Wayne back on it and he can re-establish aggro,” I said to the group.

“You got it Demanding One! And yeah, 30 seconds on the Snare.”

With Wayne running I set Kaitlin to heal Gary. Jenny was healing herself, Dan, and me. Jason was just regening mana. Tim had respawned back in the bunny fields so he wasn’t going to be able to get back to help with the Master. I hated that not only did he lose experience, but he wouldn’t get experience from the fight either since he wasn’t in the dungeon if/when we killed the Master.

Dan got off one more Snare before the Mob turned on him and started chasing his furry britches.

“Alright guys, here we go! Wayne, Bash and Taunt his ugly ass!” I yelled.

The Master was at 45 percent when we re-engaged. Again, we brought his health points down and as we approached 25 percent we all waited for the next ass whooping we would get. But at least this time we had a plan. If he spawned four new guys, we would off tank as we did before. If he hit us with the direct damage AoE, Dan would Snare him and Wayne would go off running again. This fight was taking forever. If Wayne didn’t have such a high armor rating, this likely would have been a slaughter for our side.

At 25 percent the Master cast again, this time it was an entirely different spell. We all saw the message flash before our eyes, “Your body feels the weight of the earth upon you!”

Bless the gods above, this was just a debuff. Where Jason and Kaitlin had casts buffs on us to increase our Earth resistance, the Master had cast a debuff, something that made us weaker. In this case, the debuff was a spell that slowed our attack speed, what was commonly referred to as a “slow spell” in the gaming world. Only our resistance was high enough that my group did not get slowed. Neither did Gary with his new knuckles. Only those with the 40 Earth resistance were hit. 50 resist seemed to be a magic number in this dungeon.

We couldn’t have asked for a better spell. If this had hit us earlier, and our resistance had only been based on our buffs, we may not have made it this far. Jason likely would have run out of mana. Kaitlin was dangerously low as it was now. She maybe had two more heals in her.

Thankfully the ones who were effected weren’t damage dealers. Tim was dead, and Kaitlin wasn’t attacking. The slow spell didn’t affect her mana regeneration. Only Jenny was attacking, but she was never a damage dealer, but a Tank.

We finished the mob with a loud cheer. There were high fives from everyone. Jenny hugged Wayne which made him blush. It was adorable. I love this game.

Everyone waited for me to approach the mob. We all knew I would be looting. I was tempted to ask if we could just take a break for a bit, but I thought everyone would rush me. Tim might even try to strangle me with his robe.

I approached the mob and focused on the corpse, then blinked. What popped up was glorious. There were three loot able items. All of them were rare. And all of them were tradeable. This was a player merchant’s dream.

“Oh you guys are going to shit yourselves when you see this,” I said and linked the first item. It was a necklace, the first we had seen in the game:

“Holy shit Alex, that doesn’t say binds on acquisition!” Jenny exclaimed.

“Yup, none of the items do. These are all tradeable items,” I replied.

Everyone stood there, staring at the item. Anyone could wear it, and everyone could use some of the bonuses for their character, but the obvious choice was Tim as he was the only Intelligence based caster in our group. I was going to suggest we give it to Tim, but wanted to see how his group reacted. It was Tim who spoke first.

“I know I want this item guys, but it’s tradeable so I guess we should roll for it. And it would be good for any character,” Tim said.

“Screw that noise yo! That’s not how we play. I vote for Tim and since it’s tradeable that makes this not a total loss for our brother,” Dan said.

“Yup, I second that,” Jason said.

“No one in this group is going to take it Tim, so as long as your group is good with it, it’s all yours,” I said.

Tim wasn’t in the room so he couldn’t see that his party was all smiles. I put the Amulet in my inventory and told Tim he would get it when we finished the dungeon. I wondered then what we would do about his corpse and looked around for it. It was gone.

“Ummm, Tim. Your body isn’t here in the dungeon,” I said.

“No worries Alex, it materialized here next to me on the bunny fields a couple of minutes ago. I was worried about how I was going to get my stuff back too, but looks like that isn’t an issue,” Tim replied and we all heaved a sigh of relief.

“Ok everyone, up next is a doozy. Check this one out,” I said and linked the second item.

I saw Jenny’s eyes go huge. She may have even drooled. She then quickly looked over at Jason and Wayne. Each could use the Shield and it would help each of them dramatically. I hoped there wasn’t going to be a roll though. I was hoping that my guys would give it to Jenny. Wayne wouldn’t likely take the Shield since he liked the two handed weapons. But Jason might. It was really up his alley, although the extra stun from Bash would do him no good.

Everyone was looking at their interfaces and checking out the Item, so I led the way. “Make the call.”

Wayne looked over at our teammates and said, “Jenny. I’m going to stick with the hammer.”

Jason looked over at me and I sent him a silent message that told him, if he wanted it, he could roll for it. But he shook his head. “Jenny.”

I smiled and repeated the same one word, “Jenny.”

Jenny looked at my group with amazement, understanding that as tradeable items anyone could take these and sell them to players. “But you guys could trade these, or sell them. Alex I know you are a player merchant. Are you sure?”

I smiled again and nodded my head. Dan added the last bit to cement our decision. “Not how we roll, like I said. Need before greed is our phrasey thing.”

“It’s a motto,” Gary said.

“What’s a matter?” Dan asked.

Wayne ran over to Gary and quickly put his hand over Gary’s mouth before he could say more. Then whispered in his ear. He nodded with understanding. We just avoided would could have been a reenactment of Who’s on First to biblical proportions.

Jenny thanked everyone again after making sure none of her group wanted the item. After she looted she went over to hug Jason who put his arms out and pointed to Wayne. “Hug him twice.” Which Jenny did with gusto. And which made Wayne blush even more.

“Ok mighty adventurers, here is the last item,” I said and linked.

To a tee, without any comment from our side, our teammates said “Alex” almost in unison.

I looked at my group and they all regarded me like I was a fool. Of course they weren’t going to take it.

“Thanks guys! Now that was one hell of a dungeon crawl!”

We found the stairs that led us up and out of the dungeon. We all ascended and found ourselves back in the bunny fields. I was the last one to exit and right before I trudged up the stairs, I swore I heard someone whisper, “You’re welcome.”