Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (8 page)

But first, Dan had been eerily silent for a while. And this scared me more than anything.

“Hey there TC, what you doing?” I asked.

“Reading bro, there is a manual,” he replied.

“What part are you reading?” I asked. I was now far more interested.

“I’ve been going through all the icons man, trying to figure out what they all mean. I came across the manual. So I’m just reading it,” Dan responded.

“Right. I get that. But what part are you reading?” I asked again.

“Dude. Dummy. All of it. Photo Memory remember?”

“As much as it pains me to say this, and stop shaking your head Jas…I mean Allister, but we are going to need to get a tutorial from Dan later. For now, how do I make sure that we are all hitting the same thing? How do we make sure we are just fighting whatever Wayne is fighting?”

“It’s pretty ingenious bro. And once we get more skills, this thing is really going to take off. The AI in this game has to be totally sick, and the sensors around our noggin are doing way more than we realize. But whatever. In order to do that we need to do some vocalization. It says it here in the manual. But other places where we have found ways to use our eyes, it doesn’t say that. So I am looking out specifically for those things where we do so we don’t waste our time blinking all day.” My head hurt just trying to process everything Dan just said.

“Great. So what do we do?”

“Open the attack icon on your screen. Then say ‘insert command.’ Once you do that a little window will pop open. For pick up groups you can just say ‘Follow attack of slot 1,’ which is the first dude in your group. It doesn’t matter when people join the group, you can move their slots around in your personal interface. Pretty ingenious. But in our case, you can actually say ‘Follow attack of Naugha’ and never have to worry about that.”

I had to agree, that actually was pretty bad ass. And we were ready now to see how this all worked out. First stop was the quest giver in the square. I figured the bunnies out front could be the first step to the quest, and I didn’t want to waste time killing when we could be questing. This had been months in the making, but we were finally going to start our first adventure!

CHAPTER 9

“Jesus Christ man! Run for the guards! Run, run run!” Dan yelled.

What we were running from was possibly the least successful first pull in the history of gaming. Without CC and heals, we were planning on just beating whatever mobs we came across until Jason and Dan got spells. But in order to establish our hierarchy, we sent Dan out for the pull. And he did pull. Only I think it was all of them.

“Hide your children! The nightmare bunny express is coming to town! INCOMING!” Dan was yelling at the top of his lungs as he sprinted toward the gate.

We all made it safe and sound, and the area outside the gate would be cleared of bunnies for a bit after the guards slaughtered what looked like dozens of them. Dan was panting on the ground, out of breath. I saw this as a learning point if nothing else.

“Dan, what is your vitality at?” I asked.

“It’s good man, I’ve got lots of Agility, so I didn’t eat up too much. I could have run for a bit longer.”

“Good to know!” I responded.

* * *

What should have been a simple beginning to what was a simple quest obviously hadn’t started that way. Before going out to see Dan’s rendition of the Bunny Train That Could, we had stopped by the quest giver at the center of town. His title said Sir Northampton Kenyon.

“Good day to you Sir Kenyon,” Jason began.

“Ah, good High-Elf, how are you on this fine day? Have you and your band of adventurers come to answer the call?” The Knight asked.

“Yes, Sir Kenyon we wish to answer the call,” Jason responded.

“While I am certain you speak for yourself good Elf, I am afraid you cannot speak for the rest of your friends as you are not the leader of this merry band. Perhaps your leader could request the same.” Simple point to note, but an important one. For a group quest the group leader needed to trigger the acceptance of the quest. I stepped forward and went through the same motions as Jason.

“I admire your bravado, but his Highness does not have a need for more mouths to feed that cannot produce results. There will be a challenge of sorts that you each must pass in order to continue toward raising the fame of your name throughout the lands of Tholtos. The first step is an easy one. Beyond these walls you will find a clearing where the fleetest of creatures scamper to and fro. Do not be fooled. These are vile beasts with a venom that could incapacitate or kill a child. Slaughter these beasts and return to me when you have completed the job.”

A quest window appeared in my screen and I saw that I needed to kill ten bunnies before I could return to Sir Kenyon. However, once I hit the accept button the new number was a group number. And we had to kill forty bunnies. This was an easy way to ensure that one did not get their kill count and leave before the rest of the group succeeded in attaining their goals as well. Once we had all accepted, and were enveloped by the same shimmering light we had seen earlier, we made for the front gate where our journey would begin.

* * *

“So you thought, what, that you would just get this done and over with and pull all forty at the same time?” I asked a bit exasperated.

Dan laughed and said, “Nah man, believe it or not, I totally had a plan. See, I went and aggro’ed my first rabbit, and then had him attacking me for a bit. With my Agility I was able to avoid a few of its hits. Then I ran around and collected a whole bunch more mobs. Then ran to the guards,” he explained.

“And the point of that was?” Wayne asked.

“I know exactly where that first rabbit came from, bro. Now when it respawns I will be able to bring it, and only it, for our first fight. The others won’t respawn before I am able to grab it and bring it back. I can’t do this every time, but at least for our first kill we will get to do it as a single mob,” Dan said.

We all looked at each other and it was Jason, who grudgingly said, “Damn it Dan! That’s brilliant. I hate that you have these moments of total awesomeness.”

Dan beamed from Jason’s praise. Wayne and I just laughed. Dan headed back out to the field to get ready for the respawn of the rabbit and to bring our first mob to kill as a group. “Look sharp everyone. Obviously there won’t be any heals coming. Wayne establishes aggro and after he engages for five seconds we will jump in. If the rabbit turns to attack you just stop attacking. Don’t run. Give Wayne a chance to reestablish aggro,” I ordered.

Wayne asked, “How about you give me 10 seconds Alex, since this Rusted War Hammer is a little slow?”

“Sounds good Wayne. Now everyone get ready, here comes Dan.”

“The group function on this game is really cool man. Even out there in the field I could hear your orders Alex. Oh yeah, incoming!” Dan yelled.

Dan ran past Wayne and brought the rabbit immediately into his line of sight. Wayne didn’t waste any time and swung his hammer at the rabbit. It immediately stopped in front of Wayne and began attacking me. I had seen the rabbits running around but this was the first time I had seen one up close. I had focused on the rabbit and my RAC designated it as my target. Above its head was the name Venomous Bunny Rabbit and the name was shaded blue. This meant that the mob was probably a level or two above my own, so level 2 or 3. I was guessing here, but I was figuring AltCon was using a standard means for classifying mobs by color code. Green was at least two levels below you, white was at your level, blue was one or two levels above you, yellow was three or four, and red was five and above. After 10 seconds, with the rabbit’s hit points slightly going down and Wayne’s descending a bit faster, Wayne made the call. “Engage!”

Dan, Jason, and I went behind the Venomous Bunny Rabbit and began swinging our weapons. I only had the one dagger, Jason had his mace, and Dan was slightly behind us shooting arrows. Each of my strikes was doing 5-10 damage. But the rabbit’s hit points were going down at a much faster rate. After just 15 more seconds, the rabbit died and we all cheered. We must have looked like complete idiots jumping around and high fiving each other around a rabbit corpse. “The honor is yours Alex,” Jason said.

As the leader of the group I was also the master looter for each mob. This meant I would inspect the rabbit to see if it had any loot and then distribute properly. I didn’t expect much on these rabbits given their low level. Wanting to avoid actually touching the thing, what with how realistic the game made the sense of touch, I just focused on the rabbit and blinked. My intuition was right and the loot screen popped up. I received one copper piece, silly rabbit must have swallowed that, and nothing else. The counter on my quest bar now read 1/40 for rabbits killed. I had also earned 5% experience. At the lower levels getting experience was fast. It wasn’t until you passed lvl 10 or so in most games that you really had to grind to get through levels.

“We are rich gentlemen! The rabbit had one copper piece cheeked. Hopefully we find three more so I can distribute our spoils properly! How many hit points did you lose Wayne?” I asked.

“Not too bad. My base is 1300 hit points and I am at 1178 now. If we can maintain single pulls I can do this for a while before I need to rest,” Wayne answered.

“Yeah, about that. Single pulls aren’t going to be so easy now. But I will do my best without having any snare. TheClaw warns you though, two are likely incoming. If I get three, I will run for the guards,” Dan said.

“In the meantime, I will take advantage of every break by sitting and regening. But go whenever you are ready Dan,” Wayne said.

Now would be the time where our earlier efforts would come in to play. There wasn’t a great amount of synchronicity that our group needed with two mobs, but we wanted to make sure that we engaged only the mob Wayne was fighting, but only after he had established aggro on both. After twenty seconds we heard Dan yelling, “Incoming, two baddies!”

Wayne stood up and got into the same position. This time, Dan had to stand next to him to give Wayne time to get aggro and he lost a good ten percent of hit points while waiting. But once Wayne had established aggro on both, he called for our party to engage, and I again activated my “Follow attack of Naugha” button and began hitting the rabbit. After a few seconds I landed my first Critical Strike and took 20 points off the mob. The wee bunny didn’t like this much and he immediately turned on me and began slicing into my legs. Being at the back side of the rabbit I hadn’t noticed that despite looking cute and fluffy, it had razor sharp teeth and a tinge of red on the eyes. Way to go a little psycho for the beginners AltCon.

Following my own instructions, I immediately stopped attacking by activating my second icon, “Cease Attack.” I suggested to everyone, since this may occur in these early fights, that everyone make such a button. I was happy that I did. The rabbit ripped into me for only a few seconds before Wayne reestablished aggro, and I waited another five seconds before attacking again. Once the first bunny was dead, and Wayne was down a total of 250 hit points, we started in on the second rabbit. This one had been attacking Wayne for a while and building its aggro against him. My two Critical Strikes did not draw aggro this time.

“Ready for the next pull,” Dan said after I had looted the rabbits and received nothing.

“Hold a second Dan. How many hit points do you have now Wayne?” Jason asked.

“I’ve got 900. Those two took off more than just the one rabbit plus I was poisoned during that fight. I would say I could do this two more times before having to rest for another 5-10 minutes.”

Now that we had started we didn’t want to slow down. And I could tell Wayne really wanted to continue, so I suggested we keep going. The routine was much the same after that. We killed two rabbits at a time and when Wayne’s hit points got to below 500 we rested till he had full health. The loot continued to be copper pieces for the most part. Once we found a venomous sack on one of the rabbits, likely the source of their poison. We didn’t know what it was for so I kept it in my inventory. Perhaps one of us could sell it or make it into an antidote. It wasn’t until the 12th rabbit we faced had died at our feet that something interesting happened.

“Woah. Ok guys, this is weird,” I said.

“What did you find bro?” Dan asked. He stopped his run out to the field to come back and see what was going on. “Is it some major cool loot?”

“Actually, it is,” I responded. When I opened the loot window for the 12th rabbit I received one copper piece and saw a different item in the inventory. When I focused on the item it said “Bloody Rabbit’s Foot.” I blinked on the item and the following display came into view:

I didn’t want to bother trying to figure out how to do this hands free or without vocalization so I simply said, “Link to group.” After a second I asked, “Can you guys see that description?”

“DUDE!! A rare item on our first day! That is totally epic, bro. You are the CHANCE MASTER!” Dan bellowed.

“Keep it down numb nuts,” Wayne said. We had gotten the impression that others hadn’t decided to increase their Chance from the outset like we had, and we didn’t want them knowing about our good fortune. Although the guys didn’t really know that the good fortune appeared to be because of a glitch in my system that was likely going to change the next day when I logged in. Oh well, I didn’t see any reason to look this gift horse in the mouth.