The Dragon's Wrath: Ashes of the Fallen (21 page)

If we wiped midway through, that was fine.

Maybe even if it was a quarter or three-fourths of the way through, that would be alright with me. But I was certain, that the boss was only a few attacks away from falling. I didn't know how much health it had left, as I didn't have the time to check.

All I knew, was that it was really, really close.

Letting out a sigh, there was little reason to get upset.

We could always give it another go… we were close enough to get it done.

I sat for a minute, in my spirit form, trying to relax.

My head was actually starting to hurt, but hopefully it was only temporary.

Well, I only had to wait for the guys now.

The others would appear any second, arriving with their ghostly selves at any moment. Yet, another minute passed and I was still sitting alone at the graveyard. A few minutes went by, and five ghosts of strangers materialized next to me as some other party had wiped inside the dungeon. Alan and Ethan, though, never showed up.

Something wasn't quite right here.

They were still alive somehow, which didn't make sense.

"Maybe they leashed it and reset the boss," I muttered to myself.

Standing up, I ran back into the dungeon and made my way through the five floors until I came across the other four members of my party, alive and well in a room filled with corpses. Corpses of goblins were strewn about, fourteen to be exact, as the party was sorting through the loot. Sorting through the loot and fourteen corpses… that meant one thing, and one thing only… we did it.

There was no way that could be true.

"What took ye so long Sigurd?" asked Barik with a huge smile.

"Well, fuck that," I said out of character as I shook my head and started to grin. "You mean we managed to kill the little fucker after three of us died? You're shitting me."

"Hah, damn right we fucking did it!" cheered Ethan enthusiastically as the others joined in. "And we were the first to fucking do it too, hell yeah!"

I was still somewhat disconnected from it all.

They were yelling and cheering but it became incoherent to me as I watched the scene unfold. A part of me wanted to celebrate too, to jump up and down and shout or whatever people did when they were excited… we had the world record for this dungeon.

That made us, for a brief moment in time, somewhat special.

Sure, it wasn't a big thing, it wasn't a serious raid.

This was nothing more than the second instanced dungeon in the game, and we happened to get here first while the game was still relatively new. We were ahead of the curve and there wasn't a lot of competition at the moment… but that didn't stop us from feeling good.

Ah, but my head hurt.

I taxed my mind a bit too much, during that fight.

My brain didn't work as well as it used to and one of the lingering effects of my Post-Concussion Syndrome was mental fatigue, along with issues concerning cognitive functions of a higher order, apathy, personality change, tinnitus, and irritability to name a few. Normal things for most people, just on a whole different level… and now, I was tired. I was extremely tired, actually.

I felt exhausted.

"That was really intense though," said Ethan after he calmed down a bit.

"It was, and all I could do was watch," chimed in Alan. "Was positive, once I was out of mana, that we were going to wipe and have to restart the whole thing."

"Sigurd pretty much willed us through it," said Ethan as he gave me a pat on the shoulder. "You're pretty fucking good, you know that?"

"Huh?" I asked, a bit confused at the moment.

"You tanked all the goblins on the side, the guards included, killed them by yourself, and then picked up the chief and managed to tank without taking any damage for a good fifteen seconds," he explained, long-windedly.

That was it… fifteen seconds.

It felt like an eternity, a duel to the death that lasted at least a minute. Sure, I was aware that time was slow, it's always like that when your adrenaline is rushing. A hundred-mile per hour fastball isn't that fast when you're focused. But, only fifteen seconds… that seemed wrong.

"Is that so," I said nonchalantly.

I was having a hard time getting excited now, and actually wanted to log off.

The guys went on, talking amongst themselves for a bit as I tuned out and closed my eyes. I felt sick from overexerting and taxing myself mentally. It had happened so many times before that I recognized it the second it hit, but it had been awhile since my last episode. With the game, I never expected to have this issue.

Soon, the chatting became incessant and the flood of voices was only making my headache worse. I switched their voices off and had it auto-transcribe into text, but that too became too much. A stream of text flooded my chat box and quickly formed into a large wall of text that was simply too long.

I didn't want to read it.

They were excitedly discussing the events of the fight, filling in Barik, who had missed the end of it as he was running back. Ethan described a flurry of movements between the goblin chief and me, something they couldn't quite follow in the middle of it all going down. All Ethan did was spam his fireball over and over, even as I fell to the ground and was split like a watermelon.

Then after I died, two more fireballs hit and the chief collapsed on the spot.

If I had lived another four seconds, I could have witnessed the end.

Closing my eyes, I tried to retrace my view of the fight, but in my mind everything happened relatively slowly. I saw the attacks wind up before they were released, saw them coming and their trajectories. There was time for me to react, to move or attempt to counter, even if my body couldn't quite move as fast as I wanted.

It wasn't a flurry of movements by any sense.

Ah, it clicked.

Somehow, it slipped my mind with all of the celebrating.

"Have you guys had adrenaline rushes in-game?" I asked, butting into their conversation somewhat randomly. "Heightened senses and all, the whole shebang?"

"No, can that even happen?" Ethan questioned immediately.

"I 'ave had some," answered Barik right after. "I hear it depends on the connection yer mind is able to make with the game."

"Is that how it is?" I stated while thinking over what had happened. "That whole fight, was a huge adrenaline rush, everything was in slow motion for me, but it taxed me heavily afterwards. I'm pretty fatigued right now."

"Whoa," said Ethan somewhat comically, doing his best Keanu impression.

I couldn't even laugh.

Was I even playing a game anymore?

Everything was so realistic, from the supposedly limited Artificial Intelligences that governed the Non-Player Characters like Selene and Katherine, to how real it felt to be here. When they said this was a Virtual Reality… I never thought it would be so realistic that I would find myself questioning my own reality on a daily basis.

Hell, I was even suffering from an in-game headache and had a simulated adrenaline rush. This was beginning to be a bit too real, even for me.

"Yeah," I said bluntly. "I'm thinking, I'm going to log out guys, I'm tired."

"Hey wait a minute," Barik yelped out. "Ye ain't goin' anywhere buddy."

"Yeah!" yelled Ethan as he practically skipped over to the back of the room, where a dirty chest had been sitting out of sight. "We've got treasure to deal with first lads."

Right, there was loot.

Oh, this was the fifth boss… that meant potentially excellent loot.

"Hah," I laughed out loud as I realized my mistake.

"So what's in it," asked Barik impatiently as Ethan fiddled with the chest's lock.

All of us had crowded around the small chest as we impatiently waited for it to open. Biding our time by nervously shuffling back and forth, we were excited and anxious to see what would be offered. We were the first to clear the dungeon, so there was a possibility we would have something rare inside.

Maybe, that is.

It could be entirely random, too.

We didn't know, and we didn't want to wait any longer to find out.

"Gods, ye take far too long," Barik finally spouted out as he pushed Ethan aside. "It's just a damn little lock, what takes ye so long."

"Oi I got it, step off," countered Ethan as he finally popped open the chest while pushing Barik back. "You lot are too impatient, chest isn't going anywhere."

At this point no one really cared about what was being said as we all eyed the contents of the chest. As the lid to the chest fell backwards and the insides started to glimmer and shine in the darkness of the dungeon, my imagination ran wild at what there could be.

Was there gold?

Maybe there were jewels, gemstones, or magic crystals?

Perhaps a rare item, like an enchanted dagger or a scroll that taught a rare skill… the possibilities were endless. I wanted to know, Barik wanted to know, Alan wanted to know, so too, did the frost mage.

"What," Ethan said dejectedly.

"That's it, huh?" stated Barik with a slight sigh.

The four of them backed off as if the chest was empty, much to my confusion.

"Step aside if you're done," I said, trying to budge them so I could see what had caused the sudden depression to spread like a pathogen. Brushing past them, I looked down into the chest that had a number of silver coins and hundreds of copper coins.

That was it?

Couldn't be… a chest of gold or in this case, copper and silver was nice but, there had to be more. I wasn't sold, that couldn't be it. They wouldn't have hyped us up with a chest after this incredibly difficult boss only to provide us with some coinage.

That was almost blasphemous.

I wanted to cuss at the developer, if this was the case.

"Nah, there's gotta be something else down underneath," I said as I started to sift through the coins and felt around the chest. Parting the coins and running my hands through them, I finally made contact with something that wasn't a coin. Grabbing the circular object, it felt a lot like a ring.

"There's a ring," I said with some shock.

Pulling it out and inspecting it, I was actually kind of surprised.

The [Silver Ring of the Outcast Goblin Chief] was an enchanted ring that offered plus five-percent or plus ten, which ever was lesser, to your Endurance and Vitality stat. A scaling item, that would grow with you as the game progressed, up to at least plus ten Endurance and Vitality. That really wasn't too shabby.

No, it was quite strong.

Especially this early in the game, when the other rings that had dropped were only plus-three to an attribute, this one was at least plus-five for me and wouldn't cap out until it hit ten. If I wore four of those, I might not have stamina issues in combat anymore… hell, I could probably run forever.

That didn’t even count the bonus to health as well. 

It wasn't that bad at all.

An item that could last you quite a while, disguised as a minor double attribute ring.

Hah, it was perfect for a tank.

"Catch," I called out to Barik as I tossed him the ring. "You'll want a few of those."

"Eh," he replied before actually looking.

Then his eyes seemed to widen as he looked over the details, glancing at me once then back at the ring. I knew what he was thinking, he wanted it. He only hesitated because we were both tanks and could use it equally.

"Roll ye for it?" he asked, somewhat expectedly.

"Hah, nah," I replied with a smirk. "You keep it, it will benefit you more right now."

"Ye sure?" he asked again, not wanting to take my kindness for granted.

"Yeah man, you're the main tank, 'grats," I replied with a nod.

The others looked on, a bit confused as to what had just transpired. I didn't even bother to include them in the discussion but, that was only natural. Items went to who could use them at this point, then it was split by value after. Everyone would get their equal cut eventually, and we had been running together for almost a week.

Plus, they were all from the same guild.

To deny their tank a tanking item, would be pretty stupid.

I was content with my decision.

"Right," he said with a nod of his own. "Thanks."

The others looked at me but I ignored them as I combed through the rest of the items on the floor. Barik ended up filling them in on the ring and its properties and they didn't have any complaints. It was expected, anyways.

As I started to gather the random swords, spears, shields, bows, axes, and jewelry, I finally came across the one unique item in the entire dungeon.

The halberd that belonged to the [Goblin Chief], the one that easily cut-up three people, was lying on the ground next to the corpse of the comparatively large goblin waiting for someone to grab it. It was a two-handed weapon, an axe, and a spear, all in one. The [Chief] had used a variety of skills from both the Axe and Spear proficiencies, such as [Heavy Swing], [Heavy Thrust], [Lunge], and [Quick Thrust], and the last one that caught Barik, [Jab 'n Hook], was one that belonged to the Halberd tree specifically.