Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #1) (24 page)

"These bastards bite like hell..." grumbled Eric under his nose. "When I was playing a tank, I had never heard of sensory filters being turned off in Barliona. But here you can feel every bite and every push. You stand there, teeth clenched, only thinking how not to scream in pain. Just today I increased my Endurance stat by fifty percent, and if I hadn't trained it up before on our Pryke Rats I'd have made a pretty rubbish tank. But then we'll have five additional pieces of Malachite a day... Dammit, I'm in!"

Karachun, Leite and Clutzer also agreed to carry on working while Eric and I hunted Rats in the neighbouring sections. I didn't even tell anyone yet that I also got experience for smashing the veins despite not hitting them myself, so the group would be glad of the additional experience and loot. Eric would be the one to generate aggro with the Rat, so all the extra bonuses will go to us. I must definitely remember to tell all the others to go and pick up all the loot - Rat pelts and meat - all around the mining section after we finish work for the day. Or any other useful drops, if they get lucky.

That was our first day. After I finished the rings we got through another seven veins and Rats in our zone and then Eric and I showed a total of twenty nine Rats how unwelcome they were in the mine.  Which is very unwelcome indeed. This day was when I came into my own. Two Rats later I reached level eight and put all my free stat points into Intellect; and when I reached level nine I truly started enjoying myself. We did the right thing by agreeing to hunt the Rats. One thing was disappointing: the experience gain from the Rats decreased with each level. At level nine each one gave a measly 20 Experience points. A pity, but not much to be done about it: the more you grow, the slower you grow. Eh, why didn't I start to level up in Leatherworking? So many skins going to waste. But the 18 pieces of Malachite that lay in Karachun's bag after the first day of work, which also included the two from yesterday, placated my inner hoarding hamster and greed-toad, making them nice and accommodating. We had six days to go before completing the quest.

Chapter 10

The Dolma Mine. Part 2

O
n the third day of work we lost Karachun. It was stupid and banal, but a fact's a fact - only four of us remained now. And I was the only one to blame for this. And it all started so well...

On the second day I went up to level 10, after which a Rat would yield only 10 Experience Points. Such misers this lot, I should give them the slip. I'll work a couple more weeks and then leave for sure. When I reached level 10 I started to hunt the Rats alone - there was no longer any point in taking Eric with me, a discovery that came easy enough. When we went for one of the Rats, the group which we came to help took too long to get their act together, so Eric and I were left alone with the beast. Generally that was nothing to worry about: I had Eric's back and he carefully dodged the bites, so it was all right. About ten seconds later, seeing that the crowd wasn't going to come and join us, I started to summon a Lighting Spirit.

Damage inflicted. 198: 291 (Lightning Spirit Damage)/1.4 (Level of Opponent /Character Level) -10 (Inner Resistance to Spirits).

Wow! I was right to put all of the new 15 points from the last three levels into Intellect! In the four seconds it took me to summon the Spirit I stripped off almost a quarter of the Rat's Hit Points. The rest was a piece of cake. Two Lightning Spirits on the Rat, one Healing Spirit on Eric, a Lightning Spirit on the Rat and we're done. Thus came the immediate question: why distract Eric from mining Malachite? With the next Rat I asked Eric to back me up, focused and started to aggro the Rat.

Damage taken. Hit Points reduced by 38: 80 (Rat bite) - 42 (armor). Total: Hit Points: 212 of 250.

Aw! Grey-furred damnation! How can Eric stand this? Intently banging on my tambourine I started running away from the Rat, circling around its whole territory. And why not? No-one's forcing me to stand there and enjoy the 'bite therapy'. The Rat ran after me, managing to bite me from time to time, but now it was a lot less frequent or painful. By the time the Rat finally died, I increased my Endurance skill by a good 40%. Not bad, considering that I caught only three bites, reducing my Hit Points by 120 in total. Damn, so much was taken off by Spirit summoning - practically half of the health I'd just lost. Fine - once I become a real Shaman, I'll sort out this nuisance. For now I made use of another Dolma Mine perk - the ability to heal my own dear self. One could not do that in Pryke, but here you could heal yourself all you wanted. Only one thing was bad - first I completely healed myself and then 10 Hit Points was taken off me for summoning the Spirit. Not much to be happy about, right? Where's the logic behind it? First a Spirit comes and then heals. The developers probably included this feature for a non-initiated Shaman as something of a last chance, otherwise when you only have 2-3 Hit Points left you wouldn't be able to do any Spirit summoning if the Hit Points were taken off first. But here you first summoned, got healed and then paid the price in full. I consoled myself with this thought and sent Eric off to smash the vein and started hunting the Rats. That's how the second day ended, without any sign of the coming trouble.

In the morning of the third day in Dolma, after successfully dodging some Rats in our section, I headed to the sections of the other groups. During my third round of this the Rats died quickly and without a problem. There was only one drawback - after the last Rat I was completely depleted of mana, because as your level increased so did the amount of mana you spent per spell. If at level one I spent 4 mana and 2 Hit Points on summoning Lightning and Healing Spirits, now it cost me 40 mana and 10 Hit Points. So with the last Rat my mana ran out and it had to be finished off with picks - at least the group I was with was quick enough to lend a hand. I should have gone for a drink to restore the mana, but Rats already began respawning between the mine exit and the place where we were now working, and I had to kill at least two to get to the water. I looked at the Rats scurrying about and decided not to bother, because the mana would get recharged by itself in about fifteen minutes. With my level of Intellect this wasn't a problem, so I slowly headed in the direction of my group. I had rings to finish - just three more to do and the whole group would be fully ringed. 'That's some ambiguous word I used there,' I smiled and, with all the mana that had managed to recharge by then, summoned a Healing Spirit on myself. That last Rat made an extra effort at biting me, the grey bastard. Then suddenly a shout sounded though the mine:

"Mahan, help! Rats!"

Dammit! I quickly picked up the pace and rushed towards my group. I ran without even thinking that all I could hit the Rat with was my pick.

When I got there, I had a surprise waiting for me in the form of two oversized Rats. The Large Copper Vein, which the group was mining, was located at the intersection of the territories of three Rats; and although we already killed one of them, the other two got their chance. So now one of these was absorbed in enthusiastically gnawing Eric, who habitually dodged it and was doing all he could to attract attention of the second Rat, which set its sights on Karachun. As far as I knew, the dwarf didn't have any special tanking abilities, so he could not pull the other Rat away.

"Mahan, heal me, quick! Leave me alone already!" shouted Karachun taking swings at the Rat. 'Why aren't you running away, you dope? Why are you just standing there? Haven't you ever played before? You can't run away from this section, that's clear: the Rats have already respawned on the sections between here and the exit. But why stand there and keep hitting it, not allowing Eric to take the aggro off you? That's just stupid!' Karachun only had 90 out of 250 Hit Points left. You need to run! These last three days all of them reached level 13, but invested in Strength, putting their hope in me and Eric. Looks like that was a mistake.

I selected Karachun, and started to summon a Healing Spirit. It'll be all right in a moment, I thought trying to calm myself, but then I saw a message that made my heart sink into my boots:

Low mana level! You cannot summon a Healing Spirit. You need 40 points of mana for the summoning. Current mana level: 18 of 970.

"Noooo!" I shouted, grabbed my pick and flew at the Rat. "Leave him alone you grotty beast! I'm the tasty one! Eat me, damn you!"

Current mana level: 26 of 970.

Karachun's Hit Points: 50 of 250.

"Karachun, run from it, don't just stand there! I can't heal you now - no mana! I need a few more seconds! And don't hit it - you're not letting us take the aggro off you!" I screamed, doing all I could with the pick to pull the Rat. But it was no good. With my level of Strength it was practically impossible. And Karachun himself was hitting the Rat like stupid, as if he didn't hear us. These Berserkers. Stop hitting it already, you fool.

Current mana level: 34 of 970.

Karachun's Hit Points: 10 of 250.

'Please, Mr. Rat, leave him alone already! He's really not that tasty! Look at Eric, he's plump, small and juicy. He's doing all he can to make you like him, just look at him!'

Current mana level: 42 of 970.

At last. Two seconds. I need just two more seconds to summon the Healing Spirit. 'Hold on Karachun!'

The Shaman has three hands...

Attention! You cannot summon a Healing Spirit on this target. The target is dead.

I fell to my knees. A pile of Malachite and five rings was all that remained of Karachun. That was the end of his quest for freedom. Where's that Rat? I'll tear it apart with my bare hands...

Critical damage inflicted. 406: 2*291 (Lightning Spirit Damage) /1.4 (Opponent Level /Character Level) - 10 (Inner resistance to Spirits).

Experience gained: +10 Experience, points remaining until next level: 640

The second Rat we brought down just with our picks. When it died silence descended on the mine. The other groups even stopped working to stare at the spectacle - levelled up players just bumped off their partner, giving him an extra three to four months in the mine... Yeah, there was enough to stare at, for sure. All in all my heart felt so sick that I wanted to howl.

We didn't do any more work that day. Eric picked up all the Malachite, money and rings left over from Karachun and put them in his bag, joking that's he's next on the list, after which we cleared our path of Rats and came out. The rest of the prisoners, knowing the futility of trying to mine Malachite with Rats around, followed us. There was little desire to repeat Karachun's fate.

No-one talked to each other for the rest of the day. I, because I felt guilty, Eric probably because he was unable to pull the Rats off him, Leite and Clutzer... I don't know: probably simply out of solidarity. There was nothing to say, really: the seemingly ideal plan for obtaining Malachite had fallen through. I hoped to have it done within six days, but now...

In the evening I noticed that Karachun's greyed nick with message 'Dead' next to it was still part of the group and selected the 'remove' option.

Are you sure you want to remove the player from the group? Attention! If the player is removed from the group the amount of Malachite needed for completing "Bloody Malachinte" quest will be reduced by 20 units. Following removal the player will not complete the "Bloody Malachite" quest.

Cancel! Cancel! Cancel!

"Everyone come here! Eric, get the Malachite out, let's count it!" I shouted in a voice that had a bit more life in it now. If all of the Malachite remained then there was a chance that Karachun would complete the quest - even back at his mine. I just had to get the others to agree to it!

The amount of Malachite was exactly what Karachun had on him - 42 pieces, including the pieces that we were due today for our guard work. So Karachun's share didn't vanish! Damn, I just couldn't remember what the ogre said about those who died - did they leave the group straight away or only after being removed? What happened to the quest in this case?

"In the normal game," said Eric, after I shared my guess about Karachun with the others, "even if the player is killed in battle with a boss, he still gets experience and access to loot. The same happens with quests - if he dies in the middle of one and his group completes the quest, he completes it too. If the same rules apply in the mine... Guys, even if they did put me in the can for five years, I don't want to be a bastard. Of course, Karachun's no angel if he ended up in the mines, but we should give him a chance.

"I'm down with that," replied Clutzer. "Karachun was a sharp dude. And in general we have no right to deny him the opportunity of getting into the main gameworld. That'd be just wrong. I agree with Eric - we should give him a chance. At least we'll have a clear conscience. I'm ready to put my money where my mouth is."

Silence once again descended on the mine. If even Clutzer started speaking like a normal human being, we should definitely give Karachun a chance to complete the quest with the rest of us.

The next three days went by without any major incident. Our work gang of three kept a very close eye on where the Rats lived and I always kept a reserve of mana, so everything was under control.

A few good things happened: in total we already had 87 pieces of Malachite, 25 of these coming from our 'Rat catcher' pay; I levelled up to 11, which unfortunately meant that I started to get only 5 experience points per Rat, so level 12 wasn't really going to happen in the mine. I increased my Strength and Stamina by 1, bringing up their base value to 17 and 18 respectively. My mining went up to 11 and was on a sure path to level 12. My 'Bane of the Animal World' achievement reached level three, increasing the damage I dealt to animals by three percent. I put the five new stat points into Stamina, because Spirit summoning now cost me 11 Hit Points each time. In general, everything was going well until our sharp-eyed Eric spotted some strange object in the distance.

"Leite, have a look over there: what do you see?" said Eric when we were getting ready to leave for the day. We smashed 10 veins today, systematically working our way from the entrance, but to our disappointment not a single Rat territory contained more than one vein. No luck today. As a result we moved almost four hundred meters away from the entrance, leaving ten respawned Rats behind us. Like it or not, we had to hack our way through them on the way back. In the meantime Leite was looking in the direction where Eric pointed.

"That's the mountain on the horizon, as usual. It's been here from day one, what did... What'd you see in it?"

"Don't look at the mountain; do you see that black spot all the way at its base?"

"No, I don't. It's probably a shadow that's fallen in a strange way - it’s almost evening now," Leite was a picture of incomprehension.

"Shadow my boots! Haven't you ever played Barliona before?" said Eric, indignant. "I'd give a tooth, preferably one of Clutzer's, that it's not a shadow, but a cave entrance. And if this section with the Rats is a Dungeon of sorts, the cave is..."

"Is the home of the local boss," I finished his thought. Eric was right, if the dot that he saw really was a cave, it must hide a bonus of some kind, protected by a boss. But what use was that to us? Our task was to gather the Malachite and then get the hell away from the mine, not play 'tag' with bosses.