"If we are to have any chance at it we need to separate the worgen from its mount," said Merlin. "Else, we don't have much of a chance to finish this dungeon. This is the end of the dungeon, right?" he asked Shadow hoping that he would know because of the special quest.
"It should be the end at the altar," replied Shadow pointing to the alter at the center of the enclosure. "This is where I finished the quest and is the end of this tunnel. So, according to the story line, it should be the end here. Hopefully, these are the last monsters we need to fight here."
"Nevertheless, we best try to defeat them in this chance and for that we need to separate them. Any ideas on how to do that? It is hard to get near the warg and even if we do we aren't able to pull down the worgen from its back. The armored warg is taller than some of the players." explained Merlin as he continued to attack. But most of the attacks failed. The worgen sitting on the armored warg was too skill in controlling it and managed to evade most of the attacks.
"I doubt we can do it without separating them. They even have separate HP and MP bars. I can pull them out but the worgen has whip blast and magic shield. Hold on to the terror wave skill. We will attack as soon as the magic shield expires," said Balthazar as he formulated a plan. The magic shield which had a short duration of 2 seconds and a short cool down of 150 seconds. It is another rare skill like whip blast meant to be used in an emergency to defend oneself
"Quiet Fire and Little White Feet use your long-range attacks on him to make it use the shield," commanded Shadow. "Tang get close to the warg and use taunt when the shield expires. Don't evade it and block it instead. I need to get on to you and stay in position for a few seconds for me to pull the worgen down. No one else attacks when it jumps on Tang."
"I guess you understood your part," continued Shadow looking at Merlin. Merlin quickly nodded and followed Shadow. "Once I have the worgen away from the warg, I want you, Tang and Little White Feet to handle the armored warg. Just hold it at a distance and dont get hurt. We will join you once we take care of the worgen," explained Shadow to Merlin.
Soon the long-range co-ordinated attacks from Quiet Fire, LIttle White Feet, Blinding White and Merlin forced the worgen to use the shield as it couldn't evade. This was immediately followed by Tang striking the Warg and using taunt skill.
As the armored warg jumped on Tang and pinned her down, Merlin used Terror wave putting both the worgen and the armored warg. The team managed to successfully give Shadow a decent chance. The confused state due to terror wave would last only for two seconds and he needed to make them count.
He immediately used his shadow clone skill and used the clone to use as step to jump on to the confused armored warg's back. He quickly cast cheap shot on the worgen and pulled it down along with him. "Drink mana and health potions if required, this is a critical moment and we can't fail," shouted Shadow as he began to drag the worgen away from the armored warg.
(This trick couldn't be done by guardians or paladins as they don't have the required agility for it. Mages don't have the required strength. In actuality, even assassins wouldn't have the required amount of strength attribute. The best option for such attempts would be a martial artist.)
As soon as the four seconds of cheap shot was over, he had the clone do a cheap shot and continued to run. In the meantime, the warg got out of its confused state, but tang managed to attack and divert its aggro as Blinding White and Quiet Fire joined Shadow in attacking the worgen.
Within the eight seconds of stun provided by the cheap shots, their quick attacks managed to reduce the worgens health by a decent amount. He only had 1200 HP by the end of the stun duration.
As soon as the stun wore off, the worgen began to run and started summoning. A small goblin like creature with wings appeared. "It is summoning new creatures," warned Blinding White as she swung her sword at the summon.
[Minor Imp] (common monster)
Level 3;
HP: 400;
A pair of fire bolts from Quiet Fire immediately killed the flying summon while Blinding and Shadow flanked it from opposite sides. Blinding was careful to make sure she stood between the worgen and armored warg and with her shield, she always pushed the worgen in a direction away from the warg.
"Looks like you are better at tanking monsters than I expected. Especially at keeping them apart," praised Shadow observing her calculated movements. He understood how hard it is to keep track of quick beast like warg while handling another monster like worgen.
"I should be able to do this after the goblin camp. Merlin made us practice a lot of things with the goblin riders," explained Blinding in a shy voice. "Though he is always yelling he is quite adept at teaching these things," giggled Blinding.
"Oh please! He could do with a lot less yelling. He hates teaching that is why he yells so much. He is just a prick. You will soon realize," said Quiet Fire as she too continued with her attacks.
Between Blinding White blocking its path, Shadow and Quiet Fire continuously attacking him, the worgen hardly got a chance to summon imps to even use as a shield. When it used the whip blast to try to escape, Shadow had his clone tank it, head on. It was already nearing 20 seconds and it is best he uses it for the best advantage before it expires.
The few imps, the worgen managed to summon were easily shot down by the Fire balls from Quiet Fire. The summoner already had a weak defence. Its only defending point was the armored warg that was quick on its feet allowing the worgen to evade attacks. Without the warg, it could hardly survive allowing the team to kill it even before the 20 seconds of Shadow clone expired.
System: Congratulations for obtaining the first kill of Varthus, the worgen summoner. Kindly receive the first kill rewards from the dungeon guard, Rickard Holt.
"We are going to get first kill rewards individually apart from the looting the worgen," asked Blinding White as she saw that the worgen's body didn't disappear. It wasn't only her, the rest of the team were thinking the same. If there was such a reward, then each would individually get another item.
"Damn! We should have brought someone else to be the 7th man. Now help us kill the beast!" shouted Merlin. His shout brought back the team's attention to the task at hand and they immediately rushed towards the armored warg as Shadow began to loot Varthus.
He got a worgen meat, a pair of gloves and a sceptre which he put into his inventory and ran towards the armored warg. Without the worgen to direct the warg, it became quite easy to evade and attack the armored warg. Though it had high defence, it wasn't very hard to reduce health as the armor didn't protect it much against magic attacks.
But the main trouble came after the armored warg got into critical health. Once, it reached 200 HP health, it started to run towards the weaker members of the class and started to actively avoid Blinding White and Tang.
It first charged towards Quiet Fire and almost killed her before Blinding came to her rescue. Then it continued to go for Merlin.
"Every one of the cloth-armor classes always stay behind Blinding or Tang," said Merlin recognizing that the armored warg had changed its tactics. He also quickly ran behind Tang to save himself. "Both the tanks don't evade and actively block the warg, if they run after anyone else."
With the tanks blocking the armored warg, they managed to control it and soon managed to kill it too. But even after they killed the armored warg, they heard no world announcement. Even if some other team managed to finish the dungeon, in the time they took to kill the warg, they should have at least heard the system announcement for completion of dungeon.
"There is still something left to do in this dungeon?" asked Blinding White in a weak voice. "I am not really up to killing any more wargs." They were already very tired from killing all the wargs and the worgen and had also run out of potions and their MP has also gone down. She hoped that they wouldn't to fight any more wargs. If there were monsters, they might not be able to fight and kill them with the MP they had remaining.
Shadow was also confused by the lack of notification. At such dungeons which had guards, the main objective of the dungeon was usually mentioned by guard. But he already forgot to ask Rickard Holt. This was also a special dungeon which didn't exist in his previous life and he had no idea but to guess.
"Maybe we need to break the altar," suggested Shadow pointing at the altar in the center. But he wasn't able to have any effect on it during his special quest and he doubted their attacks would break it now.
Quiet Fire and other immediately started firing attacks on the altar but they had no effect as he expected. When Tang and Blinding White used physical attack with their swords on the altar the felt like they struck some kind of thick unbreakable stone. Their weapons vibrated like a tuning fork. There was no HP bar on it either.
"I don't think that attacking that altar is the way to go," said Merlin as they failed to damage the altar. Though the red altar was didn't get even the slightest scratch from their attacks, it glowed in a red light as the magical attacks hit it.
"Why don't some of us go check the cave for clues while the rest check the altar," suggested Merlin. "I will check the altar with Shadow, also I saw a few veins in the cave during the fight. Do you best to find all the ones available."
Both Shadow and Merlin continued to examine the altar and also the portal above it, but they couldn't find anything even after 10 minutes. In the meantime, the rest also couldn't find any clues from the remainder of the cave. Shadow couldn't do anything and started to look at other thing apart from the altar when he noticed that the warg hadn't been looted yet.
"Hey, did any one loot the warg?" he asked as he moved towards it. On looting the warg, he got a slab of warg meat, a wolf shaped headgear and a quest item. His focus directly went to the quest item which was vial of warg blood.
[Warg blood] (Quest Item): Use it to activate the altar of blood and close the portal.
Seeing the description of the quest item, Shadow quickly moved toward the portal and poured the warg blood from the vial at the centre of the altar. The altar began to absorb the blood and started thrumming while it emitted a dark red light. The portal on the altar also began to vibrate and hum.
Looking at the portal vibrate, Balthazar thought he did the wrong thing. He couldn't see any signs on the altar that suggested they were interactive. He also tried to place his hands on the altar, but a mysterious energy held him back. Not only him, even the team began to feel uneasy from the red light and the humming which were increasing in intensity by the second.
Suddenly Rickard Holt ran into the cave and jumped on the altar. He quickly cut his hand and dripped the blood on the altar which allowed him to interact with the signs. The red glow covered him and a second later the sound and the light both stopped as the portal also closed completely.
Blackrock Village Region System Announcement: Congratulations to Quiet Fire, Tang and Spicy, Little White Feet, Blinding White, Merlin Grimlock and Shadow Tyrant for being the first team in clearing the Elite Mode of the Cave of Wargs. All players of the team will be rewarded with 50 Blackrock village reputation points.
White Heart City Region System Announcement: Congratulations to Quiet Fire, Tang and Spicy, Little White Feet, Blinding White, Merlin Grimlock and Shadow Tyrant for being the first team in clearing the Elite Mode of the Cave of Wargs. All players of the team will be rewarded with 30 White Heart City reputation points.
Human Territory System Announcement: Congratulations to Quiet Fire, Tang and Spicy, Little White Feet, Blinding White, Merlin Grimlock and Shadow Tyrant for being the first team in clearing the Elite Mode of the Cave of Wargs. All players of the team will be rewarded with 10 Human reputation points.
"Sorry! I failed to inform you of how to control the altar to close the portal. Luckily, I managed to come in the right so that we could avoid a disaster," said Rickard smiling at Shadow. It was then that he had a thought of what might have happened.
In the game, the NPCs have been created to have different types of personalities. One of the rumored thing in his past life was the NPCs that were saved by the players tend to have a life debt. The system forces them to repay this favour by some way or other.
Some of them sincerely offer to guard the players, some would provide a method to contact or summon them in case of trouble to clear up this debt. But there were some tricky ones among these NPCs which would withhold information so that the player falls into danger and then save the player to clear up their debt.
"Oh god! I never expected this rumor to be true," thought Shadow. "And this fellow seemed to be so righteous and even belonged to the temple. Can't really trust even the NPCs in this world."
"Well, thank you for your help. I am glad that you were close by, else I don't know what would have happened to me," said Shadow to Holt. After learning Holt's personality, he didn't want anything to do with him much longer.
"Ah! It is nothing. I owed you one for saving me. Consider this as the debt repaid?"
"Sure."
With that small issue of the debt being cleared, Holt went back to his post outside. Shadow looked at the other and explained that loot from the armored warg had a quest item which allowed him to complete the dungeon.
"Though the dungeon didn't give much equipment compared to the Corrupted forest. We did get a lot of resources from this dungeon," said Quiet Fire as she checked the resources the team obtained from the dungeon.
"Yes, I am the only cook here. Give me all the meat we got from the dungeon. I will handle them all," said Merlin. "The blackrock crystals and ores to the blacksmith," he continued pointing to Shadow.
"You know we can also become blacksmith or cooks," piped in Quiet Fire who obviously wouldn't let her cousin get materials for free. So, started suggesting that they could also use the materials that they collected.
"OK. I got your point. We will buy them but at a discount," said Merlin realizing that his cousin wasn't going to allow him to take the materials easily.
"Then, we would be expecting the finished products at a discount," replied Quiet Fire and Tang in unison.
"OK," agreed Merlin a bit reluctantly.
"So, what about the previous weapons and equipment I provided you," asked Shadow joining in the conversation. He also wanted the ores from the rest of the team, but he already provided them for free. The girls were a bit ashamed and immediately traded their ores to Shadow.
"You can consider this compensation," said Quiet Fire.
"Why don't we just play for now and later we could discuss our earnings once we setup a proper guild or mercenary group? It will be either me or Quiet Fire who will lead and decide on compensation and stuff. We can draw a proper guild treasury and points at that time," suggested Shadow bringing their discussion to a halt.
"Merlin not competing with you two?" asked Blinding White confused. As much as she is concerned Merlin was more talented than Quiet Fire and maybe even Shadow. She didn't understand why Shadow didn't mention him.
"You want to be managing the guild?" asked Shadow looking at Merlin.
"Of course, not. Don't involve me in that crap," replied Merlin. He never had any interest in management and that was clear enough to both Shadow and Quiet Fire.
"OK, now that this is settled. Let us exchange resources and get to the exit. We also need to take the first kill rewards from Holt," said Shadow throwing the spectre he looted from Varthus to Merlin.