Chapter 10 - Advancement.
After waking up the next morning and doing my usual routine, I was about to sit down when the doorbell rang, it was weird, I was fairly sure that I didn't order anything recently so I was a bit cautious when approaching the door, but upon looking through the window next to the door I recognized someone from T.V. he was Mr Davis. One of the lead designers working on Pandora.7
I open the door and ask "So what are you here for?" I have been improving a lot recently, probably due to the exposure from playing the game.
"Well, we've come for several reasons, what do you want first? the bad or the good?" He said whilst looking menacing, Mr Davis was over 6' 2'' tall and had large muscles, surprising for someone who is supposed to spend all his days behind a computer making a game.
"I'll take the bad, not like it can get any worse than living alone."
"Well you won't be getting the $500 million back, but on the upside, your $500 million has turned into $1 billion. Since the game was released we have seen many professional gamers leaving their current games to migrate over, of course, it's only about 2/5 of all professionals, but it is enough for us to make a large amount of money to create more content, so we came to invite you to a party." After he said that he presented me with an envelope which I assume contains the invitation.
"I would love to, but I have plans that day." Despite the fact that I know no one.
I didn't even check the envelope, which is probably why he started looking at me weird.
"Well if you change my mind then feel free to come, I'll leave this over here." He walked inside my house and put it on my coffee table before sitting down.
"Aren't you supposed to be leaving now? I thought that was both the good and the bad you gave me just then?" I looked a bit surprised, after all, he told me the news.
"Unfortunately no, because you own a substantial amount of shares in our company you have become a board member, so you have to attend every now and then, you are the 3rd biggest singular shareholder, but several smaller shareholders have created teams so they also amount to a large number of shares, the next one is in 3 days, and you will have to attend it, even if you don't say anything as you will be required to vote on various topics." Mr Davis said before getting up and walking out the door.
'Well, that happened.' I thought before walking towards my capsule.
I enter the game and find that none of the people I was in a party with last time is online.
I walk towards the Tavern to look for my next quest. 'Close to level 10 but I doubt I'll reach it before Ironfist finishes.' after finishing my train of thought I get into the line of about 15 people and wait for my turn.
10 minutes later and I'm at the front.
"Hello, I would like to accept a quest." but strangely the faces of the receptionists showed somewhat grateful expressions.
"Sure, We have an important quest that is available for all people, but you are required to have a party of 10 people, if you wish to accept then you will not be able to proceed until you have a full party, of course, you can accept the quest, but nothing will be provided and you will not receive a notification until your party is filled."
"So the quest is for?"
"Protecting the village, as you know or don't, the beginner village is attacked once every 10 days and they will attack within the next 4-12 hours, like I said everyone can participate, but be warned, if you accept you will need large amounts of supplies as you will be fighting for around 4-6 hours straight and if you fail to hold off the beasts at your appointed area then you will lose reputation with the village and the adventurers guild."
"I'll accept it." I replied but didn't get the notification, then again I need to find a squad within the next 4-12 hours, so I went to Ironfist and started smelting iron ingots.
3 Hours later and they all got online, I messaged them first, which was surprising for me.
"Hey, I have a quest and I need 10 people, 9 including me, do you have 9?"
"Yes, but what quest?" It seems I've got him interested.
"Sure, the village is getting attacked, in around 1-9 hours, want to join?"
"That quest, yeah we accepted it around 8 hours ago, we were going to invite you but you weren't online so we waited."
So it turns out they already knew and I was the last one to the party.
"Invite me then, what are you doing in the meantime?" I asked, "Nothing, we're going to level up our professions, what about you?"
"Same." After the small talk, we went our own ways, I went back to smelting iron ingots.
Another 2 hours later and the notification appeared.
[Beasts are attacking the Beginner Village. Your team has been assigned to the western wall, protect it with your lives.]
After which I stopped mid-way through and iron ingot and ran to the western wall, everyone else had already been there before me.
I looked at our team, there are a few new names.
[Party Leader: Deathly Smile.]
[Party Member: Deathly Senator]
[Party Member: Deathly Lead]
[Party Member: Deathly Demon]
[Party Member: Deathly Spring]
[Party Member: Deathly Decay]
[Party Member: Deathly Glutton]
[Party Member: Deathly Prodigy]
[Party Member: Deathly Cynical]
[Party Member: Blood Rose]
Looking at their equipment you can tell that Prodigy is a Dark Elf Thief while Cynical is an Orc Fighter.
Smile headed off towards the wall and we followed behind him.
"What's the game plan?" I said while Smile looked like he was thinking about what to do.
"Split in 2, but stay close to each other, Lead, Glutton, Blood Rose, Cynical and Spring on one team, everyone else will be on the other, we use the same party chat, Tanks take the lead, everyone follows their lead." After he said that we set up our position in the Northern area on the western wall, we had about 7 other teams with us, a little worse off compared to the Southern area, they had roughly 10 teams.
*Rumble* *Rumble*
The ground started rumbling, on the outskirts of the forest you could see hundreds of monsters appearing, they were all low level though, they could kill tens of them each with only 1 stroke, but it was only the beginning, when they started running out into the grasslands near the village, the tougher beasts started appearing from inside the forest.
[Iron-Fur Gorilla]
[Level: 8]
[Silver Fox]
[Level: 9]
[Shade Wolf]
[Level: 10]
There are only around 10 different types of these stronger beasts, but their levels would take us several tens of minutes to just kill 1, luckily they weren't high in number.
The smaller level beasts were starting to climb the walls, just as they were reaching the top a large monster appeared from within the forest.
[Golden Bear (Boss)]
[Level: 12]
It was too far away to tell its Health, Attack and Defence, but it seems like a pain and that it may take 4-5 teams just to kill it.
The small beasts reached the top of the wall and we started swinging, they were all level 1 and had 50 or less health.
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Most of us killed several beasts with 1 swing, not using our skills because that would drain our mana which we would need to use on the higher levelled beasts in the future.
20 minutes later and we have finally finished killing the low levelled beasts, now it was time for us to kill the higher levelled beasts that were slowly climbing up the side of the wall.
Our first challenging beast was a Silver fox.
[Silver Fox]
[Level: 9]
[Health: 250]
[Attack: 30]
[Defence: 45]
Lead cast [Leap] stunning the fox and doing a substantial amount of damage.
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Followed up by spring casting a [Fireball] and successfully managing to set the fox on fire, doing -5 damage a second for 5 seconds.
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And that was followed up by my [Stealth] and [Backstab] which managed to kill off the fox.
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The EXP from killing these monsters wasn't a lot not even 1%, probably scaled down due to the sheer amount of them.
An hour later after killing around 20 of them the boss finally approached the wall and started climbing, when it got to the top one team near us got cocky and dived into it, but unfortunately, they all died quickly due to the boss' AOE attack, we gathered back into 1 team and devised several strategies after examing the boss.
[Golden Bear (Boss)]
[Level: 12]
[Health: 3000]
[Attack: 100]
[Defence: 90]
"Okay, so remember the Bandit Leader? We're basically going to do that again, but this time we swap out the guardians after every hit, we can't afford to have the boss do a couple of quick succession attacks causing us to lose a tank, also if needs be Fighters may need to swap in for a hit every now and then, just make sure that our DPS doesn't die."
After everything was discussed Lead used [Leap] successfully stunning the boss for 1 second.
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Both Fighters got in a [Shattering Blow] causing massive damage and I managed to get in my stealthed backstab causing more damage towards the boss
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Lead took a big hit though and was left with 50 health, so he had to switch out with Demon.
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As soon as Demon swapped in Senator used [Snare] and stunned the boss for 2 seconds.
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Followed up by Spring using [Fireball], me doing a basic attack and Prodigy managing to get a stealthed backstab in.
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A couple of cycles later and the boss was down to his last 400 health, but Glutton was out of mana and mana potions, everything else was fine, our tanks had full health and our mana bars were around 60% apart from Glutton who did all the major healing.
Then we received the dreaded notification.
[Golden Bear health has entered Berserk mode. Attack and defence are 50% stronger.]
"Now then, we need to keep him in stun lock for as long as possible." I said to Smile, after all, he was the team leader and all orders were made by him.
"Yeah, but we don't have enough stun, luckily the other teams have been pretty much cannon fodder, throwing their members at the boss like it was nothing for some reason and doing barely any damage." Said Smile with a depreciating look.
After all, who wouldn't look like that when they are fighting a losing battle, he almost 1 hit our tanks when he wasn't buffed, now with the 50% extra, it was impossible.
We started with the highest level stun, [Snare] from Senator, which stunned the boss for 2 seconds and did minor damage while we all got in some damage apart from the healers who were conserving mana for healing.
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100 damage done, we could almost kill him within 3 more attacks, but our stuns don't last longer than 1 second until the CD time of snare is done in 10 seconds.
Demon used [Leap] stunning the boss for 1 more second, while me and Prodigy got in [Stealth] and [Backstab], both Fighters used [Shattering Blow], Spring used [Fireball] while everyone else who could attack did a normal attack in total dealing a huge chunk of the bears remaining health.
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Just 100 health to go, but only 1 remaining stun and everyone's active skills are on cooldown.
Lead cast [Leap] while everyone got in a basic attack doing minimal damage.
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At this point we were ready to sacrifice people to kill the bear, so Lead took a hit so we could all get at least 1 more hit in.
-500 Critical Hit
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It was down to less than 10 health, so we all dived onto the bear hoping to quickly kill it before anyone else died to it.
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Smile got the last hit in, while everyone did nothing as the bear had already died.
After the bear died we received a Notification.