Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (49 page)

“I wasn’t shooting it.”

I realized what happened immediately. The Lich, being a master of Death magic, had siphoned off some of the health of the Undead Guard. I didn’t see this as a problem though, I saw it as a solution. All we had to do was kill the second Blue and we would own this guy.

I explained it to my group, “He’s a Lich, so he is stealing the life from the Guard. Bring him over here Dan, and Wayne and I will go at him.”

“Screw that noise!” Jason yelled and cast Banish Undead before any of us could stop him.

The Guard’s hit points dropped dramatically and Dan and I were able to finish it off while Wayne stayed on the Lich. I just hoped Jason hadn’t wasted mana that we could have used to heal Wayne in the long run.

Now that the Guard was down, we all focused on the Lich. Wayne with his war hammer, me with my dagger, Dan with his arrows, and Broham with his teeth. The Lich’s health was falling quickly. I was certain he would land a few more Blood Drain spells on Wayne, but in the long run we had this in the bag. I was mentally high fiving everyone. That was the exact moment the Lich healed to full.

“What the fuck?” Dan yelled out.

“Great time to find a bug in the game! Someone needs to start writing a report on this now. I’m pissed.” Jason exclaimed.

“I don’t think it’s a bug.” Wayne said. Dan, Jason, and I were facing the interior of the cave, but Wayne was on the other side of the Lich, and looking past the Prince and outside the cave. When I looked at Wayne he was indicating away from himself and out the entrance. I turned around briefly to see what Wayne was looking at and I could see the wall of the fort not far from our location.

And that’s when it hit me. Why the cave was so close to the fort. We were so screwed.

“The fort! The Undead in the fort! We didn’t kill them before we got here. He’s probably close enough to leach off of them too. We are so so dead.”

“We’ve got one chance Alex, we run. Hopefully this asshole boomerangs.” Wayne told me.

I was all in agreement for that, and told Dan to take off first with Broham so he could make sure he got outside of aggro range and that Broham wouldn’t do something stupid.

I told Jason to go next, followed by me. Wayne insisted on being the last to go after Jason healed him to full.

All of us were outside of the aggro range when Wayne started running and getting beat down from behind. Only one of us would die in this case, but I really didn’t want any of us to lose any more experience.

Our luck finally turned and the Lich did boomerang! He popped back to his starting point and was again at full health. The boomerang reset the fight and the two Undead Guards also spawned next to him. But I didn’t care one bit about any of that. All I cared about was that my group was whole and no one lost any experience.

When we all had a moment to calm down and let our heart rate’s return to normal, we immediately started talking about the fight. And overall our reactions were positive. I mean, let’s face it. That fight kicked ass!

It was one hundred percent outside of what we had seen so far. The whole way the fight went down worked out perfectly for the designers at AltCon as well. I imagine if we had cleared the fort and then found the Lich, we would have thought him an easy target. But with the Undead all kicking in the fort, that Lich became an unstoppable force. So either way, we would have likely fought the Lich at some point without killing the Guards at the fort. Mad props to the boys and girls at AltCon for this encounter. I was even tempted to write them a note, congratulating them on a great encounter and design.

I was tempted. I wasn’t actually going to do it.

The other also thought the encounter was top notch. We even had a debate on whether we should tell Jenny and her group about the encounter when we eventually showed them the location. After debating back and forth, Wayne’s desire to have good relations with Jenny and Dan’s desire to have his balls unharmed, won out and we agreed to tell them. It was mostly Wayne and Jenny that won Jason and I over. No one cared much for Dan’s scrotum defense.

* * *

Once everyone’s mana was full and our hit points back to 100 percent, we went about clearing the fort of the Undead. Knowing the respawn time on the Undead in the fort, told us that we should have ample time to kill the Lich before we had to worry about all the Undead coming back and aiding the Prince in the fight. That last thing any of wanted was to be in the middle of that fight and suddenly have deal with all of the Undead again.

With the Undead killed and all of their loot collected, we went back to the cave. We already knew our roles in this fight, and once everyone was fully buffed, proceeded to attack. We killed the first Blue Wayne was Tanking, then killed the Blue Dan was kiting. After that it was an easy day to go at the Lich. He hit Wayne with a few Blood Drains, but his only other special skill seemed to be the life drain he had on the Undead. With all of those taken out of the fight, the Lich went down with ease.

I didn’t know if this was a boss fight or not, but I wasn’t going to lose out on the opportunity at great loot. I activated my Force Multiplier ring and proceeded to loot the Lich.

It had one item of value, a couple of Dark spells, and something that was going to make Jason very happy.

“Allister, I think this meets your requirements my good man.”

I linked the
Prince
’
s Crown
to the group. It didn’t have any bonuses to it, much like the
Regent
’
s Signet Ring
. Jason gave out a yelp of joy as he rushed over to the Lich to loot the item. We were all looking forward to Jason getting a title! Duke Allister would be so cool!

I looted the spells since I would be responsible for selling them and then linked the last item to the group. This was a neck Item that all of us could use, but wasn’t tradeable. The problem was that it was built mainly for a caster, which none of us were.

“How do you guys feel about Wayne getting this item?” I asked the group. “The Constitution will obviously do him some good, but I am thinking more about the aggro he would get from casting that spell in a fight. Anything he hit with that would be pissed!”

Everyone was in agreement, and Wayne thanked everyone kindly. It wasn’t a great item, but if used during a boss fight, it could possibly mean the difference between keeping and losing aggro. The only problem is that Wayne would need to remember to switch out his new Amulet with his
Necklace of Dark Elf Vision.
It would be the responsibility of the group to remind him to do that, until it became routine for him.

With 30 minutes still left on the timer, we sat down and waited for the Undead at the fort to respawn, so we could run through the mobs all over again. Dan, Wayne, and I were all close to hitting our Level 19, and we hoped one more run through the fort would get us there. Everyone was curious about the respawn timer on the Lich as well. I figured it was a minimum of 8 hours, and Jason and Wayne were leaning closer to 24 hours. Dan was playing with Broham. And doing a crossword.

We ran through the mobs once they respawned, this time with me sitting out with the group since we knew it wasn’t my Chance that was contingent on the boss spawning, but the location of the boss. We were having fun, since there was no real chance of any of us dying, not with Jason’s powerful Banish Undead spell playing its part. And with another round of Undead slayed, we collected all of our loot and added more Gold to our growing coffers. Dan reached his Level 19, but Wayne and I had one more round of Undead to go before we would level as well.

Wayne and I really wanted to hit our levels before we called it a day at the fort and Dan headed off to level up his Crafting. It meant a lot of sitting and waiting, but Jason and Dan seemed content to relax. Well Dan mostly. I could see Jason was itching to get back to Port Town and get his title. But for the benefit of the group he didn’t complain about having to wait for another respawn.

After the next respawn, we all had our levels. There was much celebrating. And within seconds of me calling the group done for the day, Jason had Gated with all of our loot to sell at the merchants. But more importantly, he was heading back to Port Town where his new status would be unlocked.

Ten minutes later we all heard Jason through our links to him, “Well doesn’t that just suck!”

“Are you ok Allister?” Wayne asked.

“I’m fine Naugha. I just won’t be getting my title just yet.”

“Oh no. What happened Allister, the Prince’s crown didn’t work?” I asked.

“No, no. It worked fine. Apparently the NPC quest giver can’t bestow a title on someone. I have to go to the Capitol for that. But when I tried to get the next part of the quest I was told I wasn’t at the appropriate level, you know, like how Sir Kenyon does to us all the time. I guess I will just have to keep waiting.”

The disappointment in Jason’s voice was obvious, and we all told him it wouldn’t be long till we were making our way to the Capitol. I too was anxious to get there, although none of the guys knew that.

The group had already split up, with Dan and Wayne doing their usual thing. I was tempted to go with Wayne, but I wasn’t going to add much to his efforts. And going with Dan would be entirely fruitless. I decided to spend some more time looking around the area we were fighting, just to see if there was more out here that I had missed. It also gave me a chance to level up my Conceal/Stealth. With my bonuses, I was already moving at 100 percent movement speed, but you never know when things like that can go away.

Despite the disappointment for Jason, this had been a solid day of gaming.

* * *

October 5th, 2043

My efforts to investigate our surroundings near the fort paid off and I found a few more pockets of mobs that were of a level we could gain experience. There weren’t any more unique fights or bosses, but finding more mobs meant that we had very little down time. Additionally, While Jason was in Port Town for his quest, he had learned of a player who was selling Crafted items. Nothing new there, but this player had definitely leveled up his Crafting skill significantly and was selling an item that every player was drooling over. Backpacks.

Up until this point, we only had the one backpack each, which allowed us to carry more inventory. Too often we had been forced to either leave loot on mobs or drop things at our sides because we ran out of inventory space. A backpack would allow us to carry far more goods. There was nothing magical about these backpacks, no weight reduction or anything like that, so we still had to be mindful of how much weight we were carrying. We could all recall with no problem what it was like to be encumbered and eventually fatigued. Well, Wayne and Dan remembered how much it sucked for the rest of us anyhow.

The backpacks weren’t cheap, but I wasn’t worried about the money they would cost. I was more concerned with their quality. The bags the player was selling only had six extra slots for carrying items. When I reached out to the player, I found out this was due to the type and quality of animal skins used for creating the items. The player had a fairly high skill, but he still tended to fail more often than not when it came to using the Fine animal skins. And the only skins that made eight slot or ten slot backpacks came from the largest of animals. I made a deal with the player on the spot. We would provide him with Fine animal skins at no cost, so long as we had first shot at the improved backpacks, and at a discount. There was no argument from the player.

In that regard, my extra mobs were a huge find since they were all forest animals and of a high level. When they dropped skins, they were almost always Fine quality, and there were quite a few Bear skins in there, which I believed would be used for the larger backpacks.

The other thing I found while I was out running around was a wall. A huge wall that ran across the North of the area. I couldn’t find any way around it, and I figured it represented the border of our area, and anything beyond that would be considered the domain of the next area. I was hesitant, but hopeful, that the other side of that wall was the region of the Capitol.

Also during the time from our first Lich fight three days previous, Dan had acquired a skill level sufficient to start mass producing the Elven arrow shafts. He already had several hundred in his inventory, waiting for arrow heads to attach. Dan would lose some of the arrow shafts and arrow heads during the combining process, but his skill was such that he would only lose a small percentage. Dan had stopped harvesting the Elven Elder tree for now, as he said it would take some time before he could resume without doing any damage to the tree. I reminded him of our oath to the King Under the Mountain, and he said he was fully aware of said oath, and was one of his main reasons for stopping. He also didn’t know what would happen to the quality of the wood if the tree was damaged, and that was the other reason for stopping.

Wayne’s efforts with the Dwarves continued unabated, and the higher level Dwarves were now needing to range farther out to find mobs they could gain experience from. Wayne said they were starting to look like quite the formidable force. Tibble had even taken the initiative to send two of the miners back to the main city Under the Mountain, Awswel Hall, to receive training in the healing arts. Tibble confided in Wayne that the two Dwarves weren’t much for warriors, and were only mediocre at mining, but had shown a natural affinity for patching up the dwarves who returned from leveling. Wayne, and I post-facto, congratulated and praised Tibble on his initiative and foresight.