Balthazar quickly made his way into the forest in stealth mode. As he moved through the trees he searched the forest continuously for herbs. He found a couple of corrupted poison ivy by the trees. He collected them whenever possible. The corrupted poison ivy can be used to refine a poison which reduces strength and slows down the monsters.
Within a few minutes another group of 20 rabbits were lured by Balthazar and killed be the team. The group also manged to get a new wand from the killing the monsters.
They even got a hammer and mage cloth gloves from the corrupted rabbits killed by them. It was a level 2 hammer which provides holy damage. It was immediately equipped by Blinding White. The level 2 gloves were obviously used by Quiet Fire.
[One-handed hammer] (White, hammer)
Level 2
Equipment Requirement: Strength 6;
Attack Power +8; Holy damage +6;
Durability 15/15
[Mage gloves] (white, cloth gloves)
Level 2
Equipment requirements: Intelligence: 6
Magic Damage +8; Magic Resist +2;
Durability 15/15
As they continued further, they came to an open clearing in the forest. There were eighteen thin paths leading away from the clearing. However only four of them led to the boss, Vultarc. All the remaining paths were paved with the blood of many players. They were filled with traps and ambushes and led to dead ends. Players could only come back to the clearing and try another path.
Of the four paths that were right, two led directly to Vultarc without meeting the side boss Vultusk. But these were the deadliest paths as Vultusk always ambushed them once Vultarc lost half his health.
The last two paths would allow the player to fight Vultusk before Vultarc. One of them had a lot of rabbits supporting Vultusk who would ambush them during journey. The other allowed the players to ambush Vultusk at his lair. After Vultusk both of them led towards Vultarc.
The best path was the one that allowed them to ambush Vultusk. Balthazar led them along that path. After five minutes they came to a dead end. The only path they could see was a large hole in the ground.
"Are you sure this is the right way? I heard that the boss would be in an open space surrounded by the woods" asked Quiet Fire looking towards Balthazar.
"Yes, we are near the side boss, Vultusk," replied Balthazar.
"We heard no information of a side boss in the dungeon. Everyone is talking only about the boss Vultarc," said Blinding White. "We even followed a different path to reach it."
"Yes. That is right. But once you finish half his health. The side boss Vultusk would ambush you. This is Vultusk's lair. If we finish him first the boss will become a lot easier to kill Vultarc," replied Balthazar.
"Stay quiet and follow me. The side boss is much more agile than the corrupted rabbits. Be careful. It is best that we don't allow him to get out of the hole. If he gets out, he will call for corrupted rabbits' reinforcements. That would be irritating," continued Balthazar.
"Tang you stay a right behind me. Once the fight begins, you need to block his path and make sure that he doesn't get out. Blinding and I will lead the attack as we find Vultusk," said Balthazar continuing along the hole. It was a long damp hole filled with bones of critters and other animals.
Five minutes later, they saw a 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide furry silhouette feeding upon the carcass of a large deer. Balthazar immediately went into stealth. Hearing them approach the furry creature slowly turn around to look at them.
As it turned around, they noticed that it was like a large furry humanoid with an overly large rabbit head. It had dark black fur with a pair of bright green eyes. It had large fangs coming out of its jaws with blood leaking from its mouth. It was a kind of a gory scene. It was far too realistic for a game.
[Vultusk - Lepusvir kit](Special Ellite)
Level 3
HP:1500
Vultusk is the young offspring of Vultarc. He had been infecting the forest and controlling the rabbits around the forest.
As it turned around it bared its fangs towards them. Balthazar immediately jumped out of stealth and stabbed into Vultusk eyes. The dagger went through the eye and blood poured out of the socket blinding the Special Elite in one eye. The scene was very realistic and gory. It almost made the girls puke out in disgust. A large red 50 popped up on the creature's head which began to shriek in pain.
"How could they put it in something so disgusting in the game? It isn't even a video. How come they make it so gruesome," said Little White hands looking away.
"Attack it. Don't let it recover. This is the best time," shouted Balthazar getting out of the way. Quite Fire and Little White Hands immediately began to fire on Vultusk. Tang also charged into the rabbit and slammed it with his shield on the face stunning it raising the aggro towards him.
"I will hold the monsters agro along with Tang. Quite and Little attack him as fast as possible. Blinding support Tang," said Balthazar commanding the team. Ever since Balthazar began to display his talent the team started trusting him more. After viewing the side boss, it improved they started to believe them more. They also began to take his commands after that.
As soon as Vultusk got out of stun, it swiped its large clawed hands towards Tang pushing her back and showing a damage of 40. The attack also put her in a stunned state for two seconds. Two seconds were enough for Vultusk to deplete 250HP from Tang. Her total health was just above 500HP
"Blinded White, heal Tang if her health goes below 50%. Vultusk has a swipe skill which it uses frequently. It can easily put her in critical state," commanded Balthazar as he began to take aggro of Vultusk in Tang's place.
"Tang don't use your aggro gaining skills now. I will take hold of the aggro. If I began to lose agro than you use you take aggro using provoke," continued Balthazar.
"You want to be the primary tank?" asked both Blinding and Tang.
"I am not going to tank, but I got the most aggro among the entire team," said Balthazar.
"Pretty shameless, aren't you?" asked Quiet Fire. It was good that he was quite an expert in the field but she felt he was quite boastful about it without even meaning to.
Knowing Vultusk's attack patterns he could easily evade it's attacks but he had to maintain a high DPS* for Vultusk to focus it's attacks on him. That was getting increasingly hard as Quiet Fire's damage increased due to the gloves.
To maintain the damage and aggro, Balthazar had decided to allocate the remaining 4 free attribute points into strength and agility with two points in each.
With Vultusk's aggro on Balthazar, and every one maintaining a steady DPS, they managed to take down the health steadily. When Vultusk had only 30% health remaining, there was a sudden changed in its appearance. It began to squeal in a babyish "Wreatched Humans! I will eat you. I will eat you."
The atmosphere which was tense took a sudden change once Vultusk began to speak. The babyish voice of Vultusk caused all the girls to start giggling. Vultusk was enraged and his moves also changed in both quality and speed. Also the aggro of monster resets when enraged.
It jumped in the air with its hands raised. Balthazar quickly realized the move. It was a common move from Lepusvir monsters especially warrior type ones. It was a body slam which put everyone standing on the ground into a fainted state. The only way to avoid this was to jump into the air just a moment before the it landed.
"Go back or jump away from the shock wave," shouted Balthazar but none other than himself managed to escape the shock wave when Vultusk executed the body slam. Though Balthazar was already finished the dungeon in his previous life, it had been about 5 years since then and he hardly led any beginner level dungeons for four years of his play time. He forgot a lot of stuff that the players should be aware of. All the team except Balthazar were all put into a faint state for 5 seconds after being struck by the shock wave.
The enraged Vultusk immediately made its way towards the weakest players, the priest and the mage. It was like the aggro system had reset and even changed in type. It began to concentrate on the weaker members of the team.
Though Balthazar continued to attack it, Vultusk neglected him and continued to attack the cloth armor classes first. Little white feet had a total HP of 350 and died within 3 seconds. Immediately after that, it jumped on to Quiet Fire. The stun still wasn't gone, and Quiet Fire couldn't do anything but watch the monster jump on it.
By the time the stun effect was cleared, Quiet Fire had come to critical health and had a bleed effect on her. Even though both Tang and Blinding attacked Vultusk and helped Quiet Fire out from its grasp. With the bleed effect cast on Quiet Fire, she lost even more health.
Vultusk continued to attack without any regard to its health. Its damage also continued to increase as it began to lose health. It was clearly a berserker type monster. The lower its health went down the higher its attack went. With Quiet Fire out of harm's way they continued to gain back their advantage.
Quiet Fire was covered by Blinding as she resumed her attack on Vultusk. With Balthazar continuously attacking it without losing health, he managed to regain its aggro back on to himself.
"It will use that stunning slam attack for every 10% loss in its health. When I tell you run back at least 10 yards to escape it. If your are far even if you get hit by the shock wave you will be stunned for a shorted duration," said Balthazar.
Though Vultusk continued to use a body slam with every 10% decrease in health, with Balthazar's guidance they managed to escape being stunned. But due to the loss of holy damage from priest, the DPS and the healing to the Tang and Blinding reduced.
Tang was already at critical health blocking the attacks for Quiet Fire. Even though Blinding tried to heal both Quiet Fire and Tang, it wasn't going well. As the health of Vultusk went down to 5% it made a large sweep attacks a couple of times and started to run away.
Though Tang had little health remaining, she tried her best to block Vultusk's path, but it was hardly of much use. Vultusk directly jumped onto Tang landing on her and squishing her torso beneath its feet. Both Blinding and Quiet could only look away from the dead body.
The visual and sensual effects of the game were downright morbid. Even the smell and spray of blood were realistic. The scene had them in shock that they forgot about holding back Vultusk. Only Balthazar was fast enough to keep up with it and continued behind it while the others were left behind in the hole.
Balthazar had already informed them that it would become worse once Vultusk goes back to the clearing. They ran quickly afraid that Vultusk's reinforcements might kill even Balthazar. By the time Quiet Fire managed to reach the clearing, there was a small announcement.
"Your party managed to kill the Vultusk. Kill Vultarc and free the source of corruption from the forest."
"+75 exp"
Vultusk alone gave them a total of 300 experience points. His large carcass was lying in the clearing before the hole, while Balthazar sitting beside it.
By the time they manged to kill Vultusk, even Tang was killed by Vultusk's attack. Though they managed to kill Vultusk, they lost their tank and healer. It would be a futile attempt to consider going further.
"That was too real for my taste. It might give me Nightmares," said Quiet thinking of the deaths of Little White and Tang.
"We could report about it. Having such visuals in a game would actually be detrimental to the game," added in Blinding.
"Loot it," said Balthazar looking at the carcass of Vultusk without a concern about their talk. Well, he had a good reason for that. He already knew that all such complaints would be a futile attempt from the players.
It was a fair assumption from them concerning the game. Not only them, but a large number of players would complain about the same in the first week. Yet, the authorities would stick to the original visuals and effects.
This was because of the fact that the game had different purposes than the usual profit that could be obtained. The battle along the frontier had never been as successful as the populace was led to believe. It was already being considered as a way to acclimatize people to the horrors of the real world. The game was just a test on a large scale.
The somnium technology would be used as a common means of battle training for all military within the year. There were already talks of issuing conscription notices to people from the planets near the frontier to repel the alien invasion. The attack on Balthazar's citadel was actually the event that furthered these concerns.
But this experiment had a lot of unexpected side effects. The first one that comes to mind is many couldn't properly handle the experience. The somnium technology made their brains actually experience the fights though they didn't actually get hurt. This caused a few mental problems to the players.
There were also a large group of people who actually tried to replicate the physical feats they could do in the game in real life. Without proper supervision that lead to a lot of accidents. Cause lets face it, people in real-life don't actually have the physique their characters would have in the game.
The most prominent one is that most of the game players were usually a docile bunch in real life. But they soon got addicted to battles. Some of them even ended up becoming violent in nature due to it and actually learned to fight very well compared to the normal citizens standards. Within 3 months of the release of the game, this situation even causes the local law enforcement to speed up their own talents using the somnium technlology.
But the all these were a discussion for another time. On Balthazar repeatedly asking her to loot the corpse without interest in their topic, Quiet Fire went forward to loot it without any delay.
She first removed a skill book for warriors, Stomp. With Tang and Spice dead due to bleed out, Quiet Fire held on to it. The other was a wand for priests. They had a priest in their group and Quiet Fire held on to for the same reason.
The last one was a rare material. It was a Lepusvir claw. It could be used for forging short weapons especially daggers or throwing knifes. Balthazar asked for it as soon as he saw the claw.
"What do you use it for?" asked Quiet Fire.
"It can used in forging of knives and daggers. I have learn't blacksmithing and could use it," said Balthazar openly. "I can provide the compensation for the team in return."
"Not required. It was your kill in the first place. I doubt we would have managed to take it down without you," replied Quiet Fire tossing the claw towards Balthazar.
Note:
*DPS - Damage per second