Quiet Fire added both Blinding White and fleet-footed rogue (Balthazar) into her team. She quickly led them to the dungeon entrance and selected normal mode and all of them went through the transfer passage.
"You have chosen Normal mode of the Corrupted Forest."
They found themselves in front of a forest. The clouds covered the entire sky above the forest. It had a dark gloomy atmosphere. Even the trunk and leaves of the trees in front of them had a black color. There was a thin path in front of them leading into the forest.
"I haven't been to the dungeon before this. Can you explain the plan and strategy?" asked Blinding White.
"We have corrupted rabbits at the beginning. They are fast and they have high damage. They are extremely susceptible to holy damage," explained Tang and Spicy.
"It is best we stay in open spaces for them. The scout, an assassin or range is the best option to gather them up. They usually attack in packs and have good flanking tactics If these find us in open spaces make a circle to cover each other's backs," said Quiet Fire continuing Tang and Spicy's explanation of his strategy.
"Not much else is required to handle these rabbits," said Little white hands finishing the explanation.
"Fleet, you can carry on and lure some mobs," said Quiet Fire turning away from Blinding White. "Dude! Where are you?" she asked looking around for Balthazar. Unable to find him, she messaged in the team chat.
"Already hunting the rabbits. If I find a large group, I will lead them to you," replied Balthazar on the chat. "Also send me text me when I am scouting. These rabbits have good senses and high attack."
As they received the message, they also began receiving experience in increments of 2 points each. Each corrupted rabbit provided 10 experience points which when shared among 5 provided 2 points each. They received three such increments.
Though Balthazar couldn't completely avoid the rabbits while try to agro* the other mobs and had to attack them. Due to his high attack the rabbits which had about 150 HP were easily taken down in 4 to 5 hits.
He killed his first corrupted rabbit accidentally trying to block their attacks. But he got a notification from the system which made him very excited.
"Obtained 1 life essence from a monster of the dark faction."
He immediately checked the attributes of his Mask of Shadows and found that the counter for the life essences updated by 1. In his excitement he killed a couple more. He even got a white trash shield from one of them.
"Dude! Get them to us. Don't attack them alone," messaged Quiet Fire again.
"Yeah, collecting mobs nearby. Accidentally killed a few. Wait a minute on the way," replied Balthazar. He actually manged to lure 4 packs already. He already had an agility of 14 and could easily overtake the rabbits. He also had a high visual range and easily managed to check for corrupted rabbits.
Within a minute, he managed to lure more than 20 rabbits towards the team. "Got a large bunch of them coming towards you," he messaged in the team chat.
"Got about 5 packs coming from the front. Get you skill ready and bombard them mainly holy and fire damage skills like smite, blast and the rest. Blinding get ready to block," he continued in the team chat.
"Is he for real? How could he even lure 5 packs?" said Little white feet shaking her head in derision. But no sooner than the words came out of her mouth, they say about 20 rabbits following him towards them.
"Did he put all his free attribute points in Agility? How can he run faster than the rabbits?" asked Tang and Spicy as she prepared to block the rabbits rushing towards them.
Balthazar quickly joined them and positioned himself beside Tang and Spicy. He also pulled out the shield which he looted from one of the rabbits and threw it Blinding White.
Palladins also have high strength and can tank** enemies similar to knights. Though they were not as tanky as knights and warriors, they have a decent amount of strength and endurance attributes.
"Thank you. But I don't have any shield type skills," said Blinding White equipping the shield on her left hand. She also began to move and placed herself beside Tang and Spicy to tank the rabbits.
"You don't actually need to learn physical skills from skill books in vita-nova. Do the appropriate movements and the monsters will be effected accordingly," replied Balthazar to Blinding White. He then removed his sword and held it in his left hand while the dagger was in his right hand.
Though they thought that he was talking nonsense and just wanted to assuage them or trying to woo Blinding, they began to think otherwise after they saw him equip a sword.
"That is a bit too many. It will be hard. You told that you can take us till the boss, Vultarc. Is this how you scout?" asked Little white feet in a tone that was both depressed and angry. From what she could see, the team would definitely lose quite a bit of health in the beginning or someone could even die. Death implied a loss of 5% experience in a normal dungeon.
Only Quiet Fire kept her calm and started using fire blasts against the rabbits as Balthazar went into stealth. She saw Balthazar's speed when he led the rabbits, but she also remembered that he already killed 3 of the corrupted critters.
She was stuck on that thought ever since she had seen Balthazar outpacing the rabbits. "How could someone have such high agility and also damage at level 2." She felt her thought itself was very ridiculous.
"But that could be discussed later, it was important to survive without losing large amount of health and casualties," she thought. "Let us talk about it later. Everybody start using your attacks now. Tang you try to block as many as possible. Little white and Blinding both of you focus on attacking the ones I target", she commanded immediately.
"Fleet, where are you?" she shouted looking for Balthazar. She wanted him to tank along with Tang. It was his mistake for bringing so many rabbits, so he had to take responsibility from letting them harm others. But he was nowhere to be seen.
A second later, Balthazar came out of stealth in the middle of the rabbits as he ambushed one of them. He quickly jumped from one point to another landing attacks on several rabbits. "I will hold them at a distance for you girls. Focus on attacking," he said stabbing a rabbit in the eye.
Looking at his antics, the rest of the team initially thought that he was feeling responsible for his mistake and trying to tank few corrupted rabbits from behind to lessen the burden on them. These actions were that of a martyr. No assassin would be able to continuously handle that many attacks.
But slowly they realized that none of the attacks from the monsters managed to land on him. He was able easily maneuver among them. Not only that, he had very high damage. The corrupted rabbits had a HP value of 150 each. He dealt nearly 30 per hit. When he used a skill or hit a vital point it even reached 40 damage per hit.
Within a couple of minutes, the combined attacks of the team cleared up the group of rabbits. Balthazar also noticed that the counter incremented only when he landed the killing shot on the rabbits. Still the value had already increased to 17 and he was glad that he found a way to upgrade his mask.
"How come you have such high damage?" asked Tang and Spicy. Even though they were all wondering the same, she was the first one to address the elephant in the room.
"Every monster has some vital points. Hitting them would cause more damage. Also, the somnium tech the game is using was made for military. So, all real-life skills and techniques when used cause the more damage. Real life hunter and fighters would have an obvious advantage in the game," replied Balthazar.
This information wasn't a secret. Many would be discussing in the forums about the extent of this feature from the first day of the game.
"Still it doesn't explain the high damage and speed together. Are you hacking?" asked Quiet Fire. Him cheating was the only possible explanation she could glean for the abnormal stats of the character. All of them were afraid of a hacker. If found out, action might be taken on them by other players for teaming up with him.
"I am not a hacker. It is not that easy to find a hack to such a new ground-breaking technology. Moreover, the tech runs on my brainwaves. I respect myself and my brain far too much to use any hacks on the first day of the games launch. I am not someones guinea pig," replied Balthazar. But he could see that they were not convinced, and he didn't address their question either.
"I have a friend in beta-testing. I used his knowledge to complete a hidden quest of berserkers which provides more strength and agility," lied Balthazar to explain his attack and speed.
"He was the one who told me that we could equip and use weapons and equipment even if we don't have the skill for them. Blinding you would have also experience during the fight. You tried to do a shield bash on some of the rabbits, right?" asked Balthazar looking at Blinding White.
"Actually, I did equip the shield and I tried to do as you suggested. But wasn't able to see any effects of shield bash like the rabbits getting stunned. It was very useful in blocking their attacks though," replied Blinding shyly. She was glad that he gave her a shield for free, but she couldn't lie to the rest of the team that had taken her in.
"Ah! That isn't right. You done the movements properly right. You swing your shield towards rabbit putting the weight of your entire body behind the shield. You would see completion rate when you do that. If the complete rate is less than 80% you might not activate the effect," said Balthazar trying explain his experience.
"Completion rate?" interrupted Quite Fire. "Are you using manual mode?"
"Oh! Yes. I forgot to inform about that. Free usage of weapons is only allowed in manual or semi-automatic mode. I used manual from the start. So, I kind of took it for granted," said Balthazar embarrassed. "How could I forget something that important!?" he thought reprimanding himself.
"Try it out with the shield. You will see," he added to Blinding White.
She changed her mode to semi-automatic and tried swinging her shield in the motion of shield bash. After a few trials, she suddenly yelled jumping in excitement.
"It works. It works. I got a notification saying that shield bash was used," she told them.
"But the completion rate was just 60%. How do I improve it? You seem to be very good at your skills for someone who is using manual mode." she asked looking at Balthazar for hints.
"You have seen it in other V.R. games, right? Just practice your technique. You will soon get it," answered Balthazar with a lie. He couldn't say that he had previous played the game for a very long time.
"That is fine. Shield bash is one of the paladin skills. It is reasonable to assume that you can do it in manual or semi-automatic mode. But you are using a sword. That is totally not a skill of your profession," said Quiet Fire. For some reason, she was still not convinced that he isn't using a cheat. But the cheat Balthazar was using was something inconceivable. So, she decided that he was hacking.
"Change to manual or semi-automatic mode. You will be able to equip dagger or sword too. You can use it for basic attacks, but it won't give any skill completion or usage notifications when you use. Try it out if you don't believe me," said Balthazar holding out his dagger for her to take.
She immediately took it and equipped it in her secondary weapon slot. Being a mage, her primary weapon was a wand given by default. She tried to move he weapon around and even attacked Tang with it. Only then she was convinced and returned the dagger back to Balthazar.
"But still your technique in evading the rabbits was very good. I doubt the quest helped you with that," said Quiet Fire still unconvinced. The way he bent or swerved just before a rabbit managed to land an attack was a bit hard to believe.
"Wow! She is very observant. Well, it should be expected of a person who would establish such a strong adventure group whom even first-rate guilds used to be wary of," thought Balthazar.
"I already told you about that. I have been hunting since a kid and even continued it as a profession in searching through unknown territories and planets. So, that is all my skill and awareness. That is all," replied Balthazar.
"Wow, a real-life expert!" exclaimed Tang and Spicy as she slowly walked towards him. "Please, teach me how to fight expert. Do you know martial arts? Teach me whatever you know. Accept me as your disciple," she said holding his hands and started to beg to be his disciple.
Balthazar was freaked out by the sudden outburst from this thin and lanky girl. Based on her appearance, he thought that she might have been a model in real life. But she apparently was really into fighting and they were all really perplexed when she started asking to be his disciple and tightly held onto his hands. Quiet Fire was the only one who wasn't surprised.
The girls Tang and Quiet Fire were all childhood friends. They were quite close from the time they were kids. Tang had been a big fan of martial arts and fighters for a long time. Her brother had shown her first action movie which involved martial arts and people competing against each other in a dojo.
From that time, she had been a big fan of such things. Though her father never allowed her to learn those and told her that a girl shouldn't be hot-headed, she always had an interest and managed to learn little stuff from here and there. Most of it was thought by her own brother who worked as a policeman.
Balthazar looked at Quiet Fire for help not knowing what to do with the lady grovelling to be his disciple. She was in the same generation as him and he didn't want to take any disciples. But Quiet Fire just began to laugh after she saw the baffled expression on Balthazar's face.
"I am not really qualified to be teaching you. It is one thing to hunt with a knife, but fighting is another thing entirely," he began to explain her.
"Just teach me whatever you know."
"It might not even be suitable for you. Why don't you practice in the manual mode in the game? It would definitely improve your skills. You can even go to the arena to fight once it opens."
"Hmph, why can't you teach me?" she asked angrily.
"Because I am still learning and if my teacher comes to know that I am giving lesson to someone, I will be beaten up," said Balthazar. He could only lie to stop the girl from pestering him.
"Well. Leave him be. You can definitely improve in the arena," said Quiet Fire before Tang could continue. "Let us finish the dungeon first."
"Yeah. If you are really that into fighting, wait for a few days. I heard that a few training centres are already looking into employing somnium technology for teaching purposes. Some guilds are already talking about having contracts with them.," said Blinding White.
"Let us talk about that later. We need to focus on the dungeon. Fleet could you please continue to gather mobs," said Little White Feet. Seeing him in action, even Little White feet who didn't like him from the beginning slowly came to respect him a bit though unconsciously.
Balthazar was beyond glad to put an end to the conversation. He led them a bit into the thin path on the forest. Then, he asked them to stay put and went further inside. "It would be another group of rabbits of similar size. All of you change to semi-automatic mode and be ready," he messaged as he went in to gather the monsters.
Notes:
*Aggro (also commonly spelled 'Agro') is a term used to describe the act of getting the attention of an NPC
**Tank is a character whose primary role is to absorb damage and prevent others from being attacked. Tanks are "meatshields", so to speak, putting themselves between the mobs and the more vulnerable party members.