Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (17 page)

“Guys! Hold up a second, there is someone here.”

I kneeled down to the NPC and told him, “You don’t need to fear, we won’t hurt you. Are you lost down here?”

He nodded yes and then said, “One of my flock got into the sewer and I came down here to find it. I lost it and my way. I’ve been hiding in this hole for I don’t know how long. Please help me, please, I just want to go home.”

“Nice! A side quest! What does it say Alex?” Dan asked.

I couldn’t tell the guys that I already had the quest for this NPC as that would cancel it out, so I told them the other truth. “I’m not getting any quest text. I think this just might be a part of the script. But honestly, I think we should help the guy.”

Dan was the first to pipe up, “Forget that man, it’s just an NPC, it isn’t like he is going to starve to death or die of thirst. We got bunnies to deal with!”

“I disagree. I think positive karma would shine down on us if we helped out this NPC. Never underestimate the power of Karma Dan. And before you reply and say something about inspirational posters like you did to Allister, know that I will punch you in the throat. Hard,” Wayne said to Dan.

Dan just swallowed audibly.

I seized on the momentum and made a declaration, “Ok guys, I say we take this guy back to the gate. We haven’t seen any respawn yet, so maybe we get lucky and get him there and return here before the respawn.”

“Fine. I am formally lodging a protest though,” Dan answered. “Follow me, I will get us back to the gate. It’s just around the corner anyhow.”

“What? We’ve been walking around for over an hour!” Jason yelled.

Dan snapped at Jason, “Keep it down there Alli Baba. We were clearing the dungeon. I couldn’t tell you where we needed to go till we had seen where everything is. Now stop harassing me! Already made me put down my crossword.”

And Dan had obviously been paying attention to what he was doing, because just as he said, we arrived back at the gate in two minutes. The mobs had respawned but knowing we didn’t have far to go in order to return was a blessing and we didn’t mind having to kill a couple more mobs.

Knowing that I needed to speak with Simon privately, I told the guys, “Hey, I am going to go out with him, maybe some kind of quest will open up once we have him on the outside.” Everyone nodded their heads in an affirmative and I walked out with Simon.

Once we were outside the sewer and back in The Wastes, I turned to look at Simon. Before I could say anything he began stammering his thanks and apologies, “Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about quests, but thank you for saving my…”

“Simon. Stop talking.” I said with a very serious tone. He immediately shut up.

“Somewhere there is a door. You know where it is. But you don’t know where it goes. Where is that door?”

Simon’s face got very pale. He backed away a couple of steps, but hit the side of the alley. He started shaking his head no, “I don’t want to go back there. It’s too dangerous.”

“You don’t need to go back there, just me. And what was dangerous about it?”

“There were monsters all over the place. One of my flock got away, and I went running after it. Sounds like that happens to me a lot huh? But really I am a very good shepherd, it was just one of those days and with the lightning and the thunder the poor thing got scared and started running and…”

“Simon. Stop rambling. Take a deep breath. What was dangerous? Where is the door?”

“When I found my lost sheep I saw over the rise a door set against the side of a hill. As I started to walk up to it, a bunch of really big animals came out from behind the hill. There were two bears, a boar, and a wolf. I mean you don’t normally see that kind of thing. All of ‘em together like that. But as I walked backwards, so did they. So I thought to test it, and started walking forward again. The wolf lunged at me, and I just barely got away alive. My sheep wasn’t so lucky.”

“I’m sorry for your loss Simon. but I still need to know, where is the door?”

“Here, I’ll just show you on your map and then you’ll let me go right?”

“Even if you don’t want to show me Simon, I won’t hold you. But I did just save you from the sewers, so it would be the right and proper thing to do.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m forgetting my manners and all that. Place really scared me. The sewer I mean, not the door. I mean the door too, but…”

“Rambling again Simon.”

“Right, sorry. Here you go, I marked it on your map. Good luck to you and your friends with those beasts, I don’t think even you four could take them, no offense.”

I smiled at Simon and said, “None taken. Now go home, and get cleaned up. And I would suggest you sleep for an entire day. You will feel much better after.”

“Thank you again for everything, and please tell your friends I said thank you to them as well,” Simon said as he shook my hand. Before he could say another word, I stepped back through the gate.

* * *

“Sorry about the delay guys. I was convinced we would get some kind of quest if I just asked the right question or said the right phrase. Unfortunately, nada,” I lied to the group. I felt horrible about doing so, but if I didn’t they would have just asked more questions. Couldn’t have that.

“It’s not a problem. Thanks for trying. Let’s get back to that room. I think we are all at full mana, and if there is a boss in there, we should be ready for it.”

We headed back to the large room and looked inside. We couldn’t see to the other side of the room, as the room had a concealing mist within it. Which made me think that two could play that game.

“Alright guys, this is going to suck for all involved, but mostly for me,” I said.

“I like this already,” Wayne said. “Normally when something sucks it ends up being me that gets thrown in the thrasher.”

“We can’t see very far into that fog, which means you know there is something hiding inside of it.” They all nodded their heads. “So I am going to use my Conceal and Stealth and go check out the interior.”

To a man, they all groaned. I knew that my Conceal and Stealth were slow and that meant they would have to sit around for a bit, but I didn’t think I would get such a strong negative reaction.

“It’s a good call, Alex. I’m just thinking about how far the tectonic plates will shift by the time you are done,” Jason said.

“Hmmm, I’ve always wanted to read all of Moby Dick in one sitting. Think this might be my chance?” Wayne added.

“Oh! I’m going to do my crossword!” Dan finished. Dan obviously didn’t notice that the other two had been joking, or he did and saw a squirrel and totally lost his train of thought and just came back to crosswords.

“Funny. Very funny all of you. Except Dan, which doesn’t sound right at all. I’ll let you know what I find when I’m finished,” I said while trying to engage my Conceal and Stealth. And then got ready to begin slowly, oh so slowly, to make my way into the fog.

It only took me a few tries to get both my Conceal and Stealth going. I told the guys I would be back soon, to which they laughed, and headed into the fog. The room was larger than I thought at first glance and it took me a few minutes to move across the length of it till I finally saw the mobs. There were three of them. There were two of the Giant Venomous Rabbits, who were both blue and one Guardian Venomous Rabbit, who was yellow. I relayed this information to the group and then started to make my way back to the hallway. After what seemed an eternity, I made it back to the group.

Everyone looked over to me as I disengaged my Conceal and Stealth. I popped up behind them, just because I wanted to scare them a bit. Jason and Wayne jumped a bit, but Dan seemed off in his own realm. “It takes forever for you to get anywhere, but that is definitely a useful skill to have Alex,” Wayne said.

“That’s the truth brother. How goes the crossword Dan?” I asked.

“Almost done bro, this one was hard. Oh yeah, and 7,” Dan said.

“Seven what?” I asked.

“Just 7 bro. It’s the last number in Pi. That’s how long your shit took, I was able to figure it out,” Dan said while smiling.

“Ha. Ha. How are we going to take these guys? No way we can pull all three at the same time,” I commented.

“Clear to the gate and then try to boomerang the yellow? That way we can pull the blues into the corridor first and finish them off, and if our pull doesn’t work out we just leave the sewer?” Jason asked.

It seemed like a good idea, but Wayne made a good point, “I worry though, what if by all of us leaving the sewer we just reset the whole dungeon and then have to start over?” None of us wanted to redo the two hours of work we had just accomplished.

“I can try to snare the Guardian. Kite him around the room while you guys take out the two blues. I’m going to have some massive aggro on me though if it takes you guys a long time. But while I’m running it around, that should give Allister time to heal Wayne,” Dan suggested.

“Can you land your snare on a mob that many levels higher than you?” I asked Dan.

“Might as well find out!” Dan replied enthusiastically.

With our plan in place, we ventured into the room and the fog immediately lifted once the mobs had us in their aggro. Dan’s first attempt at snare on the Guardian failed, and his curses were reminiscent of when Wayne was repeatedly falling on his face. Thankfully, the second cast landed and Dan began to kite the Guardian around the room. The rest of us moved to the center of the large room to give Dan the ability to use the outer walls as his running area. Wayne quickly got aggro on both mobs and we started to whittle one, and then the other down. Jason said he was good with mana, and so Dan ran the mob over toward us once Wayne had both Taunt and Bash ready to go. Wayne ran out to meet the Guardian before it got to our group, as it was still moving slow because of Dan’s snare, and hit it with Taunt and Bash. Both were successful, but the mob still came at Dan, as he had cast more than one snare on it during our time fighting the blues.

“That thing hits me Wayne and it is going to hurt worse than when I rode a bike for three weeks without a seat!” Dan yelled.

Dan kept backing up, trying to avoid the Guardian’s reach, and finally Wayne was able to establish aggro. The Guardian turned on Wayne and started going to town. After three seconds, just to be safe, Dan and I both engaged. Me with my dagger and Dan with his arrows.

“He has a Bash that Stuns. Looks like it lasts for two seconds. I’m still keeping aggro,” Wayne said.

The mob was down to 50 percent life when it released an area of effect spell. How the hell a bunny has spells I will never know. Stupid video games.

The area of effect, also known as an AoE, caused poison damage to all of us. It was a pretty substantial AoE as well, taking off 20 hit points every six seconds, and doing substantial damage over time (these spells were also called DoTs for damage over time.) Dan could have healed himself, but we decided to focus on damage instead of healing. That’s what we had a cleric for. And in the end, it was fine if Dan and I died, but Wayne and Jason had to stay alive. The AoE lasted for two minutes, taking 400 hit points total. When the Guardian hit 25 percent health, it cast the spell again and we were once again poisoned. We all had enough constitution though to last through both of the AoEs. I imagine if we had not been so gracious with our Constitution skill points, this could have ended badly. Wayne had 3100 hit points base, with an extra 200 for being a barbarian, so he was riding out the AoE. With Dan, Jason, and I at less than 50 percent health and Wayne near full, the Guardian died.

There was much celebration between us, and I went to loot the body. I found 3 silver, an undamaged rabbit skin, and a surprise loot that I linked to the group:

“Damn that is nice!” Wayne said. “I think all of us could use that resist to poison down here in the sewer.”

“Agreed,” Jason said. “I think we should roll for it.” The game had a function that would allow you to pick a random number between 1 and 100. Whoever had the highest number would win the loot. Gamers would say “roll” harkening back to old board games where people would roll a multi-sided die to see who would win a piece of loot.

I looked over at Wayne and he gave his head an imperceptible shake, and then glanced over at Jason. I was thinking the same thing. With the Wisdom and Intelligence, I preferred Jason have it as well. And none of us had Poison based attacks. All that left was Dan.

“Hey Dan, did you want to roll on the cloak?” I asked.

Dan had been sitting against the wall with his eyes closed. He finally opened them and said, “Huh? Oh, let me take a look. Nah, give it to Allibaster.” Dan hadn’t even been paying attention the whole time.

“You better be close to finished with that thing,” I said.

“Dude! This one is hard! And do you know how difficult it is to do a crossword that you only have in your mind? Now let me finish so I can focus like normal!” To which we all laughed. Because normal for Dan was what was clinically considered a severe case of ADHD.

“Well there you have it. Congrats Allister!” I said.

Jason looked over at me and Wayne, “You guys don’t want to roll? But Naugha said it would be good for any of us.”