Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (28 page)

I wasn’t shocked that everyone wanted to take the forest route. Just walking along the road would be boring. And more importantly, if we didn’t have anything to keep us occupied, Dan would talk. At length. And none of us wanted that to happen.

So with a nod in the direction of the woods, we headed out.

* * *

Our first hour was fairly dull. The mobs outside of Port Town were all too low for us and none of them would attack our group. We had Dan ranging ahead to make sure we didn’t stumble on anything dangerous, and that kept Dan occupied. So at least that part of the plan was being executed without fail.

After that first hour we started finding mobs that were blue to us and were able to get some experience. Like most of the mobs in the forest, these were some variation of the wildlife one might find in a forest. As such the loot wasn’t very good, as you don’t expect a Dire Wolf to have much on them. But we kept plugging away as we moved closer to our goal of the bandit camp.

After the first hour of fighting, the guys all got their level 14. Two more hours after that, I got my level 14 as well. We allocated all of our skill points and took the time to go over everyone’s character. My group was definitely diversified:

Level 14

Alex (Alex)
–
16 (+2) Strength, 18 (+12) Constitution, 10 (+1) Agility, 33 (+11) Dexterity, 6 (+1) Wisdom, 1 (+1) Intelligence, 13 (+2) Chance

Wayne (Naugha)
–
25 (+2) Strength, 43 (+4) Constitution, 4 (+1) Agility, 17 (+1) Dexterity, 6 (+1) Wisdom, 2 (+1) Intelligence, 1 (+1) Chance

Dan (TheClaw)
–
16 (+12) Strength, 20 (+2) Constitution, 37 (+11) Agility, 3 (+1) Dexterity, 18 (+1) Wisdom, 1 (+1) Intelligence, 1 (+1) Chance

Jason (Allister)
–
11 (+2) Strength, 20 (+2) Constitution, 3 (+1) Agility, 1 (+1) Dexterity, 55 (+8) Wisdom, 5 (+6) Intelligence, 1 (+1) Chance

Having reviewed our characters, and being pretty damn happy about how badass we were, we continued on toward the bandit camp. With our current progress, we figured we would be there after another couple of hours. While we were looking for the camp, we were also looking for a safe place to log out. It was the consensus of the group that whatever we found, we would want a full day to take it on. Since it was going to take us almost six hours to get there, we planned to scout for another two hours or so, discuss strategy, and then hit it the next day when we had all the time we would need. Getting tired was not a good option.

Dan continued to range ahead as he had the best map out of all of us with his Class skill. We lingered behind and made sure no mobs snuck up on Dan. I also practiced my Conceal/Stealth.

At this point I was successful with engaging my two skills 95 times out of a 100. It wasn’t failure of the skill that was the downside, but the continued drop in movement speed. Although with my bonus from training with Stan and my Blacksuit skill, I would be moving at 90 percent of normal once I maxed out the skills for level 14. Continuously moving around in Conceal/Stealth was all that was needed to improve the skill, but I did fall behind the other guys. Not terribly dangerous for me though since I was invisible with Conceal/Stealth.

“Well this doesn’t seem right,” we all heard Dan say.

“You ok out there Dan?” Jason asked.

“Yeah man, I’m fine. I found the camp. But there is something wrong I think,” Dan replied and then linked us the location to our maps. It was a short way from our current location.

“Well what seems to be the problem brother?” Wayne asked.

“This is the problem,” Dan said and then linked us a Bandit Guard. And the mob was yellow to all of us. At level 14. Dan was right, that shouldn’t be the case.

“How many guards did you see Dan? Are they all yellow, or just that one guy?”

“All of them. I’ve seen four from a distance and each one is yellow Alex. Pulling these single we would still have a hard time with just one.”

“Ok Dan, get back here and let’s figure this out,” I told him.

Dan arrived a few minutes later and we started talking about our options. We knew our gear was the best in the game, and that on a single yellow we could probably take it if we managed the aggro properly. But if we got two we would probably be looking at a slaughter.

Dan was surprisingly quiet throughout our discussions and I was about to engage his thoughts when he yelled out, “Eureka!”

Dan didn’t hesitate to fill us in on his find. “Well this will teach us not to read the quests when we get them from Sir Asshat. Everyone open up your quest log and tell me what you see.”

Sure enough, as soon as we opened up the log we were able to see where we had gone wrong. Under the quest description was a small annotation that read “Players Allowed: 8”

“Son of a bitch! This is a mini-raid. Well that makes way more sense now, since all these guys are yellow!” Wayne exclaimed.

We knew who we would want to raid with us, but their levels would not do much good in a fight like this. And they likely would have to progress to this point before they would be allowed to take part in the quest as well.

“Has anyone reached out to Jenny and her team? Wayne?” I asked.

Wayne’s blush gave away the fact that he had indeed been in touch with the female Paladin, and likely quite regularly.

“Um, yeah Alex. I talk to Jenny every now and again. You know…about strategies and all that. And stuff. You know,” Wayne rambled.

“It’s cool man. That’s nice of you to help her out like that. Very altruistic of you,” I responded while smirking more than just a little bit.

“Oh! Another name I can call our Cleric! Altruist!” Dan yelled out.

“Way to stay on topic Dan,” Jason replied, not the least bit amused.

“So where are they at in the game now Wayne? Done the sewers yet?”

“Yup, they finished the sewers and they have been grinding through for levels. They are trying to get to level 13 so they can get the same quest we just finished. Sorry to say though, it will likely be a while before they get there. Probably another week. And before you think that maybe there is another team out there we could join up with, there really isn’t. Since we helped out with the AltCon quest, and then got them set up with the rings, they have grown to be the second best group in the game. Jenny sends her thanks for that by the way.”

“Sure, we do all the work and Wayne gets all the hugs. Think Kaitlin will give me a hug?” Dan asked while Wayne blushed even deeper.

“More likely it will be Gary.” Jason answered and we all laughed.

“Well we are faced with a bit of a quandary then aren’t we? We obviously can’t take these guys. And we are going to have to wait a while before we can get help from our team mates. Any suggestions?” I asked.

“Let’s just stay out here and get experience. The mobs aren’t dropping much in loot so we don’t have to worry about getting back to town to sell our stuff. And this is likely an untouched area, so we will have free reign on the mobs,” Jason supplied.

“I’m in agreement with Allister. I will let Jenny know what is going on, and let her know that her raid team is ready once they finish the supply quest. I would offer to help them, but there really isn’t much more we can do to help them out. Our gear is still better, but they are inching up on us,” Wayne said.

“Well I get new spells at level 15, as I’m sure Altruist does as well, so we fight out here till 15 and then head back to Port Town,” Dan added at the end.

I didn’t like the idea of being so far away from Stan and not getting a chance to practice more with my Rogue skills, but the group was right. We needed to be out here leveling since the only mobs that would give us experience near Port Town at this point were the ones in front of Stan’s home.

“Agreed. Let’s move a bit away from the camp in case there is a wandering guard. I don’t want to be in the middle of a fight and suddenly have to take on a Yellow mob.”

We only had a couple of hours before we planned to call it a day, so we headed out away from the bandit camp and started killing mobs. Our experience bars were moving dreadfully slow, but we didn’t have anything else to do. As Jason had mentioned earlier, the mobs didn’t have any loot worth mentioning on them, so we didn’t have to worry about getting over loaded and suffering from fatigue.

After those two hours, we found a safe place to log out for the night and agreed to log back on at 10am to continue grinding. This was likely to be a long week, if not longer, depending on how quickly Jenny and her team could level up and complete the next quest.

* * *

September 6th, 2043

Logging back in, I couldn’t see any noticeable change from where I had logged out and where I had logged in, but that ever present ERROR message still popped up every time I entered the game. It was only for the briefest of moments, but it was still there. It had become routine for me to check my character when I logged in to ensure that my Chance hadn’t reverted to a normal number. Upon inspection I saw it was still tweaked, and my Chance was at 132 with my bonuses.

After everyone had gotten back in the game, and our group was made, we had Dan range out to find us something to kill. Jason and Wayne followed at a distance, and I was farther behind as I continued to practice my Conceal and Stealth.

As I was coming around a tree, a mob suddenly popped into my field of vision, not ten feet in front of me. The name over the mob was simply Treasure Hunter, and he was Yellow to me. Thankfully my Conceal and Stealth were activated or the mob would have seen me jump a good five feet in the air. I knew I was invisible, so I took the time to get a better look at the mob.

He was a human, and was wearing a collection of tattered leather clothing. He had a very cool looking black leather duster, a walking stick, and a cowboyesque hat. The satchel hanging over his shoulder was also worn and leather. I couldn’t see any weapons, but anything could have been under that duster. The coolest thing about the mob was the black eye patch over his right eye. I’m not going to lie, Dan was right, the eye patch made him look bad ass.

I remembered that Chance had two separate functions in the game. One was integral in the looting of mobs after killing, and the other one dealt with the spawning of rare mobs. We had seen this take place while we were in the bunny fields outside of Port Town when we were killed for the very first time. And it appeared I was seeing it again here.

I backed up a good twenty feet or so and contacted my group, “Hey guys. I think the Chance Master just struck again.”

“We haven’t killed anything. What are you talking about Alex?” Wayne asked.

I linked them the Treasure Hunter and I heard all three of them gasp. I also sent them a point on the map far enough away, I hoped, from the mob that it wouldn’t aggro them when they appeared. I told the guys to meet me at the point to discuss strategy.

“Dude, that is so bad ass. I totally forgot that your Chance could also affect the way mobs would spawn,” Wayne said.

“It doesn’t seem to work the same way the looting does though. I mean this is only the second time we’ve seen anything that looks like it could be a rare mob,” Jason added.

“The Chance skill creates a diameter, or ‘bubble’ around each character where the chance of a rare spawn increases based on the character’s Chance skill. The bubble for each character increases as the Chance skill increases,” Dan recited from memory. “Since Alex is usually nowhere near mob spawn points, since he doesn’t pull, I am guessing it doesn’t have a chance to work that often. There must have been some random mob that was about to spawn right next to you bro, and it turned into this Treasure Hunter. That’s balltastic.”

“Well obviously we need to kill him. And I don’t see any other mobs around here, so we should be able to just rush the guy. Any objections?” I asked.

“You sure you don’t want to try an experiment first Alex?” Jason asked, smirking while he did.

“Stop trying to get me beat up Allister. Wayne are you ready?”

“Not just yet. Since we have no idea what this guy is going to do to us, lets buff up our resistances.”

That was a good call by Wayne. This guy could be a magic user, and we wanted to have every opportunity we could get to survive the fight. Jason cast all the buffs he had on us, since we had no idea what this guy could do, and then sat for five minutes to regain some of his mana.

When we were all ready, we crept a little closer to the mob and then Wayne ran out at him, yelling “TheClaw is an asshole!”

Dan immediately looked mortified and asked, “Hey, what did I do?”

“It’s my new battle cry before I attack a mob. I thought you would like that one as much as you giggled at my other ones. Now stop pouting and shoot this guy.”

Dan continued to pout, but he did also start shooting. He was too far away to hear Wayne whisper, “Naugha got jokes too bitch.”

The Treasure Hunter did not have any other weapons besides his walking stick, but he was using that to beat on Wayne mercilessly. Jason was keeping up with the heals and after a bit of time I joined into the fight so that my proc wouldn’t pull aggro off of Wayne. We were smart to buff up our resistances, as the mob had an AoE spell that caused fire damage over time, like the poison from the Venomous Rabbits we faced way back when. Only with our resistance the damage wasn’t substantial enough that Jason had to worry about healing the rest of us. After a short time, we killed the Treasure Hunter and Jason began healing himself and me, while Dan handled his own heals.

I looted the mob and found two items on him. I linked both to the guys: