Chapter 57- Cocky cock (1)

VR game 'Escape' touted itself as most advanced game out there. Which meant it would cater to large crowd and it was capable of satisfying needs of multiple sets of people. Few preferred hack and slash games. Few liked things to be gory. Few were happy with PG -13 rating. Few loved otherworldly scenery. 'Escape' promised to fulfill each sort of wish.

As people wanting fights were higher, they got more options inside the game. Dungeons were places were teamwork and leadership showed their specialities. So even a novice village would have 8 to 12 dungeons and each dungeon would be different and difficult.

Compared to mad rat dungeon where many had finished first level and lost only to second level monsters or boss, cocky cock dungeon swallowed players' pride in first level itself. It should be remembered that other than select few (less than 20 players), all had entered the village few days later, that too after death penalty was working normally. Other villages had many people at level 5 but here, only few had that level. Now the progress had stopped due to discovery of dungeons and deaths within it.

So after few tries, players had given up on this dungeon and concentrated on mad rat one. Once the dungeon was cracked, they could play as many times they wanted and raise their levels and then try this dungeon.

Other than few 'talent scouts', the entrance to dungeon was fairly empty, a complete contrast to other dungeon entrance Saachi had seen.

They rechecked items in their bags, made sure potions, reserve potions, reserve weapons were all easily accessible and entered the dungeon.

Unlike the first one which looked like underground cave, this dungeon opened up to empty field.

No coops for these creatures.

Soon they saw bunch of chicken, buffed up, black coloured, demonified red eyed, the size of large dogs playing game of tag ( or fighting for food, who knows?) using a long slimy creature.

As soon as one noticed the players, it called it's brethren and all started with 'charge'.

These monster chicken were just level 3 and simple minded, certainly not finger licking good. To newcomers, this monster charge was overwhelming, thus more than half were eliminated at this level itself. As with all the charge skill, one should know when you block, when to dodge annnnd when to run away.

They ran away in different directions, pulling few chicken to each player and before they realised the folly, one or two of them died and aggro got stabilised again. It was wide field, more chances to run and to evade on both sides.If agility was high enough, kiting these monsters and killing them slowly was no problem.

So the party travelled to end of field where there was indeed a coop of sorts guarded by mini boss chicken. This one was fluffy yellowed one. It would have been sooo cute if it was palm sized, not calf sized. It's talons gleamed red and were pointy and sharp. Its flapping of wings started tornado slashes. Poor Royo! He had to stand in front to suffer, while others caused damage. And he loved fluffy things. He really did not want to bash that fluffy head with his shield.

His shield 's durability shrunk. But easier way to grab aggro was to punch in face - whether be it a man or monster. The team had to waste few mana portions to slowly decrease the HP as they were using AoE spells to cause more damage. Normal hits rarely caused more than 50 HP loss. That was far less than HP it could regenerate. Higher the levels of monsters, better the HP and MP regeneration, sometimes a lot better than player's regeneration. But normal attacks had help too. They could interrupt the mini boss from using new skill. Thanks to nearly instant cast, fire balls were used as control and firebombs were interrupt to big skills.

After so long, the fluffy monster died.

" I swear if it drops fluffy chicken cloak, I will....." Royo suddenly stopped. Saachi could never find if he would have kept it for personal use or torn it in anger. Royo was permanently banned from corpse looting. The other three looted and waited nearby to recover stamina, HP and MP. Saachi was happily foraging and gathering again.

He did not know what had changed but his multiplier bonus was like it was steroids, it consistently gave 5 to 10 X bonus on minimum and for elite or higher, the bonus minimum turned to be 30X. Was it because, this was dungeon? Saachi had to find out later.

Anyway he had multiple sets of items within his inventory. If he had not borrowed the inferior space ring, it would have been very difficult to store all the equipments and weapons. After all, these would not stack, this taking up more space unlike foraged materials and monster drops. Whatever...he had struck gold this day. Now, to see if he could earn the pot of gold held in escrow account - the amount bidded for advertising for first clear.