Chapter 58: Boss Takedown

  My interface pinged with a reminder we had just finished taking the lizards surrounding the floor boss out. I had set the alarm to go off twenty-four hours before the NPC auction. After this auction, I would be locked out of the next auction cycle as the early-release players had free cracks at it. At least the NPC cities would also be participating in the first round, so the players would not be able to get NPCs for their cities at a low cost. When I could rejoin the auction, millions of players would be in the game, and guilds with huge pockets would be bidding. So, this was my last chance. I had seven platinum and eighty gold on hand. We retreated to town and sold all the loot, gaining us another seventy gold.

  I let Yorric eat and sleep as I sorted my lists and prepared to make bids. I decided on four masters, and the remainder would be experts. It costs a platinum coin to bid on an NPC with master-level skills, while just one gold is needed for an expert bid. I wanted as little competition as possible for my bids. In terms of industry in Malcum, we had thriving paper and furniture manufacturing. Looking at the economic tables in my interface, these two industries were generating about 40% of our trading income.

  I already had two master paper makers, and adding a third was going to be easy as no one else appeared interested. I had six masters to choose from, and no one had bid on any of them yet. I selected the dwarf as he was at the top of the list, which I assumed by the sort that he had the highest skill level.

  There were a lot of NPCs with the woodcraft furniture skill in the auction this cycle. A few other players had bid on some, but dozens were still available. I selected two expert giantkin with the expert rank and a human with the master rank. That should help our production drastically. Although there was a huge disparity in the speed if an NPC had magic to aid in the production. Since I could only see one skill, I didn’t know if these NPCs had supplemental magic for their profession.

  Lumberjacks were in high demand among the players. I guess I had hoped the players who were going to lose their characters at the end of the testing period wouldn’t be so invested in the auction. I was wrong. I bid on two expert lumberjacks: one halfling and one orc. For the orc, I was outbidding another player.

  I switched to NPCs who had skills for harvesting resources to fuel our crafting in Malcum. I had one master herbalist already, so I bid on two experts in the herbalism skill. There was too much competition in hunting and skinning skills, so I tried the survival skill again. It looked like no one had figured out my little back door. Since you could only see the NPCs highest skill, you could miss out on a gem. Mira, my demonkin ranger, was a master in survival but also had half a dozen other skills at the master level. I bid on a master beastkin: wolf in the survival skill.

  I wished I could add more NPCs with building skills, but even the novice NPCs in the auction had been bid on. I found two stonecutters at the expert level that no one had made a bid on, probably for quarrying stone. In Malcum, we used magically created stone for our building projects. I assumed other players did as well, so stonecutters were not in high demand. I bid on the human and elf stonecutters, and maybe I would get lucky, and one would have magic to aid their profession. If not, they could still help Malcum’s building boom.

  I was quickly running out of bidding slots. I checked on Malcum’s food situation. It was not balanced with meat, composing about half the diet. Did that even matter in this game? I searched for a few minutes and could only find the variety of food that affected a population’s morale. I found some obscure skills to round out my bidding: milking, orchard tending, pastry chef, beekeeper, grape pressing, and shearing. I used all my remaining slots in these skills, some at the master rank and the rest at the expert rank. I assumed these NPC would have secondary and tertiary skills related to these so they would be great additions to the growing city economy. My NPC bidding list looked less impressive than my earlier efforts. But I hoped I wouldn’t have to work as hard in the end game on the auction closing.

  I gathered Yorric and we returned to the dungeon to grind. I constantly checked on my NPC bids between encounters as we moved back toward the floor boss. The orc lumberjack had a response bid, and I doubled the bid in response. Although the levels were decent for my NPCs I only had one potential warrior in the tracker with the survival skills. I knew even just an expert warrior that started with a one gold bid would balloon to over two platinum. That was how fierce the competition was at the last auction.

  Since I was away from my town’s treasury, I didn’t want to get into a bidding war. I was furiously harvesting what I could in the dungeon just in case the extra sale of loot would be needed. As the timer came close to ending the first round of the NPC auction, two more of my NPCs were bid on, the mastery pastry chef and quarrier.

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  I halted our progress and reviewed my options. I was glad the devs hadn’t required me to be in Malcum in order to bid in the NPC auction. That had been a fear of mine. I would have raced back to Malcum if that had been the case. My options were not good. I looked for a possible hidden path to add more military strength to Malcum. With nothing obvious, I rebid on my NPC’s. I was rapidly approaching level 30 and knew what talent I would be choosing.

  It was called Skill Seeker and would allow me to see the second strongest skill of NPCs not just in the auction but also with my analyze skill. For the analyze skill, I needed to be ten levels higher than the NPC in order to see their primary skill.

  I sat on a lava rock formation in the dungeon while Yorric guarded me. I was guessing even NPCs with novice levels in skill were going to cost dozens of gold in the future. Right now, the minimum bid was a single silver coin.

  I watched anxiously as the auction came to a close, and I was left contesting four NPCs, as twelve NPCs moved to my completed block. I sent Mad Dog a message to have him alert Kytalia about the new arrivals. Then, I returned to focus on the NPCs that I hadn’t won the bids.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised by any one them. I was mostly happy to have gotten the level 70 tracker without a bidding war. I increased all the masters to one platinum and the cook to one platinum and thirty gold.

  When the next round ended, and we went to the back-and-forth round, where we each had time to respond to the other, I secured two more NPCs when my opponent didn’t respond. I was just left with the lumberjack and dessert cook.

  I took to raising the dessert cook by just a copper and applied my remaining funds to trying to secure the lumberjack. I figured increasing the supply of my industries was far more important than catering to Malcum’s sweet tooth.

  As the timer approached zero, I didn’t respond to the bid on the cook, so I applied the remaining one hundred and fifty-six gold to the lumberjack. It worked. Although I lost the cook, my opponent didn’t outbid me on the lumberjack. I sent Mad Dog the details of the final three NPCs he could expect to arrive in Malcum with their families.

  Over the next few days, I received notifications on how the new NPCs were integrating into Malcum from Black Beauty. She had been designated the go-between Kytalia and myself. It wasn’t as smooth as in the past, and we lost the centaur herbalist after two days. I assumed it might have something to do with new arrival NPC quests. Since I had not been present, I was unable to fulfill her requirements. Black Beauty thought it might have been the lack of specialized housing for the centaur race.

  This was good information; I hope to avoid making the same mistake again. It wasn’t long after that I reached level 30 and had to make a choice for my new trait. I had been planning to choose a skill seeker trait but thought the extended family might be useful as well. Extended family would show how many family members an NPC would bring when they relocated after the NPC auction. I needed to grow Malcum, and if I couldn’t win the best NPCs at the auction, then I might focus on NPCs with large families to increase the population.

  In the end, I decided on skill seeker. When I reached level 40, I would consider extended family again. I was starting to feel homesick, but the speed and efficiency of the grinding were improving. I continued my efforts with Yorric at my side.

  The days started to blur together. Every day was the same thing. We would enter the dungeon for 16 hours and then go into town, sell the junk loot, rest for six hours, and return. Well, Yorric would rest. I spent most of my evenings drafting plans to sell at the game launch.

  During our grinding sessions, the big experience bump was always at the final boss of the level. It was the last thing we did every day. Rounding up the surrounding rock salamanders, killing them, and then running away back to the entrance. This was a 90-minute run on Titan at full gallop. It prevented us from dying against the large lizard boss but was slightly humiliating.

  When I hit level 31, Yorric joined me in my grinding. He didn’t have a good ranged repetitive attack, so he usually just rode next to me. When I whittled the kited mobs down to three or four, we would both dismount and finish them in melee. This got me a little bit of skill advancement in melee, conserved my mana pool, and kept Yorric from getting too bored.

  It took ten days to grind to level 35. It took so long because after I passed the salamander and elemental highest level of 30, I was getting a lot less experience from the kills. Now that I had reached level 35 and Yorric was at the same, we decided to challenge the floor boss again. Yorric had 120 spears stockpiled for the attempt, and I was prepared to die so Yorric could flee.

  I had been informed by Mad Dog that if Yorric died, I could resurrect him at any epic temple in the world for 350 gold. That is ten gold per level. My relationship with my companion bodyguard would take a hit, but he would not lose any levels. I preferred to just take the death penalty to myself instead.

  I managed to reach level 36 by the time we reached the boss and did my normal round-up of the surrounding salamanders. When the last salamander died, my attention was focused on the floor boss. Yorric was waiting a good distance away, waiting for me to call him in if needed. The Stone Salamander Pack Leader landed just behind Titan as we began circling the pillar the boss had been sunning himself on. His tongue lashed out and nearly reached us as we raced away.

  The tongue attack was new. I think it extended maybe 15 feet. The boss started plodding after me, and it was faster than a normal rock salamander but not faster than Titan. I was beginning to think this was going to be possible, but after I struck him with my summon boulder spell about a dozen times, he stopped chasing me and screeched loudly. Four salamanders appeared at the cardinal directions and rushed toward us. One was intercepted by Yorric, who I was confident could handle it.

  I had to weave a bit on Titan to get the new rock salamanders in a line and keep the floor boss behind me. I checked on the boss, and I had removed just over 10% of its health at the cost of 30% of my magic pool. My summon boulder was only level 7 as it was a single target spell, and I had been using the hail of stones almost exclusively. I had a lot of mana regeneration potions at least.

  I focused on the add-on salamanders and eliminated them. Then, he returned focus to the boss, and almost immediately, he called support in again. I checked his health, and it was at 90%. I swore and circled and kept checking the boss’ health. He was regenerating very slowly. So, whenever he hit 90% in an encounter, he called for support, so I couldn’t let his health recover over 90%, or he would just keep summoning when I got him back to 90%.

  With this information, I managed to get the boss down to 80%. This time, the support of four lizards came from the pillar. At 70% the four support salamanders came from one direction. 60% a different direction. I started to have Yorric cycling so he didn’t get besieged by four lizards at once. He could probably handle it but didn’t want to take the risk.

  At 50% health, the boss summoned eight salamanders in support from eight different directions. Titan got slightly injured while I was trying to make sure the boss’ health didn’t go over 50% while still managing the small swarm. At 40% the boss summoned eight lizards again but this time from one direction. This was ideal for me with my tactic of kiting on Titan. I didn’t have to round up the lizards. The same thing happened at 30%, 20%, and 10%.

  At 10% the boss also went into a berserk mode, increasing his speed. I was still faster than him on Titan, and I sighed in relief when the boss was finally slain. A door opened on the pillar to the next level, and a chest with my rewards appeared on top of the pillar. It took me almost 3 hours to finish the fight. I managed to gain a single level, reaching 37.

  My biggest gain was increasing the level of my stone boulder spell. It went from level 7 to level 13. I used the spell evolutions to reduce the magic cost by 10% at levels 11 and 13. I could have increased the damage, but the sad fact was I burned through so many mana restorative potions. I had been putting all my stat points from leveling into my intellect stat to learn another spell. I was getting close to being able to learn a new spell but was still not quite there.

  After savoring my victory, I did the climb up the pillar. It wasn’t too difficult as there were almost step-like protrusions around the black glass-like structure. The chest was made from the same volcanic black rock, and I opened the lid. When counted, a small pile of 42 gold coins was on the left side. The next item was a stylized white cotton shirt, which I analyzed.

  Swashbuckler’s Cotton Top, +20 Agility, +5 Luck, +5 Charisma (Bonus Effect:+50% to balance when on board skyships or sea ships)

  Bonus effect? I had to ask Mad Dog through the chat. You could only wear a single torso armor, and the shirt counted as such. However, the bonus effect could still be utilized since armor could be worn over the shirt. Only the outermost armor worked in calculating defense, and only one bonus effect could be utilized from an additional piece of clothing: socks, underwear, shirt/bra. So, you could garner up to three additional effects. Mad Dog said they were rare finds and worth good gold. No one in the Silver Linings Playbook guild currently had one.

  When I told him of the bonus effect, +50% to balance when on board sky or sea ships, he said that was typical. Bonus effects usually run the gambit for specific circumstances or environments.

  I moved on to the only other item in the chest. It was a master skill book for sword: two-handed. This weapon would add +1 to the skill up to level 23. It should be worth a fair amount to sell to new players, but it wasn’t going to do me much good. I removed my leather armor, put on the shirt, and then put the leather armor back on. The leather armor was inferior in stat bonuses but still had a much better armor value than a simple shirt. I also didn’t want to lose my set bonus.

  I looked at Yorric, “So, do we descend?” The giantkin just shrugged. I ignored his indifference and went into the archway that had opened on the pillar.

  The next level had the feeling of mined caverns of cooled lava rock. The temperature had definitely increased, and we were in a large cavern lit by pulsing blue and white crystals in the ceiling. Rock spiders and mud elementals were what the barkeep had told me. I scanned the area, and I thought the thick pools of water had to be the mud elementals. We walked forward slowly on foot. The spiders were rocks…a small boulder sprouted its legs and attacked us. We quickly dispatched the ambush predator. It just looked like a rock, and it didn’t have rock-hard skin. Its poison was paralyzing, though, a 3-second, no-save paralysis.

  A miserable opponent for a small group like us. We tried one of the pools next, and the mud elemental was immune to bludgeoning attacks. All my rock attacks were useless. My axe and Yorric’s glaive made short of it, though. The level of the monsters here looked to be 30-32. I was not going to get a lot of experience from my kills.

  I open a chat window with Mad Dog to talk about the dungeon and my difficulty leveling. After many discussions, he suggested that I remain on the first level of the dungeon until I hit level 40. After getting over ten levels higher than the monsters, the experience return would need to be bigger. Then, I should return to the second level for the mud elementals and rock spiders. The reason was I could kill the salamanders and elementals on the first level in larger batches.

  I took his advice, and we entered the portal and returned to the dungeon entrance. When we tried to reenter the dungeon, I could start on the first or second level. That was right; Mad Dog said once you beat a boss, you could skip it in the future and start on the next level.

  We returned to the first level and started grinding again, but there was no pack leader boss when we got to the pillar at the end of the floor. I hadn’t looked forward to burning through so many potions again, but I was addicted to the reward chest. You never knew what you were going to get. After a quick typing session with Mad Dog, I learned I needed to wait for the dungeon reset—usually 24 in-game hours for a floor boss. I asked Mad Dog to tell Jaesmin I would be coming back soon. Mad Dog told me she had been a woman possessed since I left. Working on buildings with Sanso and the build team from first light to sunset. They wanted to impress me when I returned.

  We returned to town and rested to wait out the timer. I had enough potions to take on the boss twice more. I could level up my stone boulder spell enough to get a fourth attempt or purchase more mana recovery potions from local vendors.

  The next day, my second run through the first level and slaying of the boss only got me a single level, reaching level 38. The whole boss fight was anti-climatic for me as there was no thrill of the unknown. The loot chest still held a lot of excitement for me as I opened it.

  40 gold

  Swashbuckler’s Boots, +20 agility, +10 speed (Bonus Effect: +10% positive reaction from NPCs while on skyships or seaships)

  Master Skill Book: Fire Magic

  The boots had a minimum level of 30 and looked extremely fashionable. They didn’t have the armor bonus that my heavy leather boots had, but I switched them out anyway and added my old boots to my sell pile in my bag.

  When I put on the new boots, I got a notification.

  You have obtained two pieces of the swashbuckler’s set. Collect and equip all seven to double all bonus effects.

  I immediately started a chat window with Mad Dog, who was just as excited as I was with the information. Mad Dog burst my bubble a little as he suspected not all the pieces could be collected by defeating the first-floor boss. A common tactic by designers was to make a piece available on each level of the dungeon. But if there were 12 levels to this dungeon and only seven pieces, that didn’t make much sense.

  The next day, we repeated the first-floor boss, and I didn’t reach a new level, so I was disappointed with the loot chest.

  39 gold

  Black Leather Gloves, +10 Agility, +20% resistance to poison

  Novice Skill Book: Dodge

  The gloves would be useful on the second level, but it was not part of the swashbuckler set. My time in town was spent hunting up more mana potions. Nothing I found matched the quality of Tonna, my alchemist. I burned some coin to portal to the dwarven city and resupplied there, getting 97 mana restorative potions for about half of the coins I have made in the dungeon over two weeks.

  With my new efficiency taking down the first-level boss, this should give me three attempts at the swashbuckler gear. I actually had Yorric watch from a distance now as we raced through the level and reached the boss. Three days and three kills of the pack leader got me one more piece of the swashbuckler gear and two interesting other items.

  Swashbuckler’s Leggings, +15 Stamina, +15 Constitution (Bonus Effect: take 25% less damage from a fall)

  Redbeard’s Cutlass, +10 Strength, +10 Intellect, (Special Ability: Black Mark, you can mark one person and you will always know the direction that person is located)

  Sentient Rope, 20’

  The sentient rope was cool. It was like a pet that would do what it was told. It could be useful in tying someone up or helping navigate up a mountain. It did feed on my mana pool when it was active, but not too much. A fighter might have trouble owning such an item with his small magic pool.

  I noticed all the items in this dungeon seemed pirate-themed. I was guessing Redbeard had been a captain. I was extremely curious to see if he also had an entire outfit like the swashbuckler. Maybe after I got some more mana potions, I could try my luck again.

  We were riding back to town while I was calculating how many potions I could get. Maybe I should sell some of the better loot and a few of the items. A chat request from Black Beauty had me slow to a walk on Titan.

  It is time Tallis, Jaesmin is having the baby.

  I stopped and looked at Yorric, who was patiently waiting on me. I had passed his level. I was now level 39 while he was at level 38. He didn’t complain that I was hogging all the experience. I said, “Yorric, it is time to return home. Jaesmin is having our….” I paused and thought for a long moment, “baby.” I knew it was just a seeded AI, but the AI in this game was just as real to me as a person. I was beginning to accept it.

  We galloped back to the city, and I quickly dumped all the trash items from my inventory, and we made our way to the portal stone. It was going to be fairly costly to get Yorric, myself, and the two horses all the way back to Malcum, but I was willing to do it. At the portal stone, there were many people in robes standing around. I ignored them and pushed to the portal. At the portal was a woman in a worn red robe with gold trim.

  She spoke, “I see you wear the Mask of the Sullen God. I am High Priestess Ja-lura. I sense you are planning to leave the island and ask that you leave behind the mask you wear if you do not wish to bind your faith to the Sullen God.”

  The quest that I had ignored since coming here was slapping me in the face. Either do the quest or let someone else do it was my impression. I thought Mag Dog had said there were multiple masks out there. I asked, “Do I need to bind my faith to the Sullen God in order to release the Sullen God from his unlawful confinement?”

  I hadn’t researched faith or gods, and if I threw in with the wrong god, it could spell disaster for me and Malcum. The priestess was still watching my haawkishly as I edged closer to the portal. Maybe I could escape a decision…but then it would be harder to return to try and collect the rest of the swashbuckler set. Finally, she spoke, “No, in order to continue, you must choose.” The priests in robes formed a circle around Yorric, me, and the horses. Ja-lura held out her hand for me to return the mask.

  I took off the mask and turned it over in my hand.

  Mask of Sullen God, +3 to all stats, all attempts to analyze you will fail

  I really liked the ability that no one was able to use the analyze skill on me. It also seemed the Matriarch AI was pushing me in this direction. So should I have faith that this was the right thing to do? I put the mask on.

  Do you wish to bind your faith to the Sullen God?

  I said the words aloud, “Yes, I do.”

  The priestess smiled, “So be it. You are now bound.”

  My face burned, and I tried to remove the mask as it melded with my face. I screamed as the pain continued to increase, and finally, it stopped. I ran my finger over my face, and the mask was gone.

  I looked at my notifications.

  You have selected your occupation: Acolyte of the Sullen God

  You have three mandatory quests in your log

  Aspect of Sullen God, +10 to all stats, all attempts to analyze you will fail

  God damn it!

  ? Copyrighted 2024 by AlwaysRollsAOne

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