"Forget about the crossbow bolts. They are not worth much. Send some of the guys with you to help me. I have better luck with the chests. These are filled with higher levelled underwater materials," said Shadow sending pictures of the contents inside the chests. "Even when sold for money, these would fetch more coins," he said as he went to the other mine where Roll was already waiting for him.
"I thought you would try to disable the mine first. The chest with a tripwire is bound to have better loot," said Roll as he held the pin of the mine in place. Shadow joined him in disabling the trap and in 20 seconds they opened the chest guarded by the trap.
It was the same as the other ones filled with the same things. "Is it nothing special?" asked Roll as he looked at Shadow's unexcited expression.
"It is the same as the other chests. Let us check the final one," said Shadow moving on to the next trap. After another 20 seconds, the same was repeated.
"It is a good harvest overall. We have many level 15 herbs and resources in these chests. I don't know what we could do with the fish and other water monster meat in the tubs, but we can think about them after these are transported to the town," said Shadow as he went out.
Most of the thirty players who were led by brick had already joined as reinforcement and have station themselves near the warehouses and the mounted guns. Only the assassins were in that group were asked by Slaine to check the tents nearby and loot anything useful. He already informed them of the loot that they found in the warehouse and told them to choose selectively.
Slaine wanted them to stay in the camp and help with further conquest of it. Though they had taken over a small area, he was sure that these were not the best things available in the bandit camp as it was quite easy till now. It is an area filled with level 10 monsters. Though they were lower levelled than the players he brought, they had high numbers and the presence of the mounted guns which allowed them to push back the monsters made him a bit doubtful. So, he wanted to make sure that there are no surprises and had all assassin's moving in stealth and also had lookouts while the others filled up their bags.
In a couple of minutes, the weapons in the warehouse were swept clean by them all and they ad done the same thing with the items available in the other warehouse too. Each of them had bag space to fill up 20 slots. The weapons and equipment took one slot each, but the resources and some tools form stacks which could be put into the bags.
Once, they have emptied the warehouse, the total number of armaments and tools that they collected was close to 500. The resources which could stack up to 20 pieces per stack were above thousand pieces and they were all at least level 15 or above resources. They were already quite eager to explore more of the camp, but Slaine strictly laid down the rule that they could go further into the camp only after they exchanged the loot that they collected with players below level 10 that were sent by Lizzie.
Thus, the wait began. Everyone including Shadow and other assassins were stopped from venturing further even in stealth. Slaine was afraid that they might accidentally trigger the bandits' attacks which he didn't want till the loot was safely back at the town. They waited for close to 10 minutes during which the nearby tents were also cleared of anything that could be looted, when the transporters arrived. During this time a few of the players were bored and even went to check the outer areas of the lake with the newly acquired diving gear.
The transporters were numbered around fifty which were more than enough. The loot was quickly exchanged with half of them who immediately channeled their hearthstones to return to the town. The remaining Slaine had them wait close to the gate through which they entered and also man the mounted guns. He decided to have them serve as lookout. As they were not even level 10, they would have a hard time to survive a bandit which were level 10 elite monsters. So, it is best if they stay back and be ready to provide transport of loot if required.
There were a total of 40 players above level 10 of which Slaine divided a group of ten led by Brick to guard the location by the warehouse. The camp extended to both left and right of the area with the three mounted guns that they captured. He was sure that once they started moving to the left, the bandits would attack from right or the other way around. So, they needed a few players to hold ground and someone to determine and inform him of the attack by an overwhelming force. Thus, he split these 10 most of whom are tanks so that they would have a path of retreat in a dire situation. A death would cause 10% loss of experience, which would pull him back to level 11 from level 12 that he recently achieved when they used the mounted guns to kill the bandits.
With these 35 players guarding at their back, the 30 players moved ahead to explore the area to the left. There were a total of 6 assassins ahead of the others with Shadow leading them. They moved ahead of the others to check for ambushes and hidden attacks. As they assassins had stealth skill, they had a high chance to avoid such attacks. Even if the bandits were regrouping in large number, they could observe their number in stealth without alerting them.
Shadow had them all check the tents and plunder whatever they found as they moved ahead. They continued for about a mile when Shadow finally heard a few bandits at the tents. He found a point to peek at them and they in the process of arming themselves in preparation for a fight. They were talking something unintelligible and it sounded like squeaks and screeches which made no sense to him.
He immediately informed the others as he went closer and found a few of them working on something new. It was an apparatus similar to the gun mounts but this one had wheels on it. "This one solves the problem of moving the mounted guns," thought Shadow as he took pictures of it and sent them to Slaine.
Slaine was very surprised and happy as he looked at the picture. He had felt bad that he couldn't use such gun mounts further to capture the entire camp, but now it looked like the game itself provided him another solution. He started to dream about capturing the camp and the lake area for the guild for a few seconds before he came back to his senses.
"Can we acquire them?" asked Slaine. The picture provided by Shadow gave a good view of the new apparatus but not the number of bandits or other things in the area.
"Close to impossible. If we somehow manage to get close to it, we might be able to kill them and quickly use it to get to safety with it. Afterwards, we can try to move further into the camp, but it is not going to be possible to get any significant advantage with a single one," replied Shadow.
"There is only one of them?" asked Slaine surprised. He had expected there to be more than one. Even if their numbers were lower than the bandits as single transportable mounted gun can't be used to handle three of the fixed guns. They had already used dynamites and mounted guns. So, he expected the game to have created a situation where it disables these two advantages that they had.
"I can see only one, but there is a good chance that they might have others too. We don't know what are present at the side where we left Brick and others on guard," said Shadow reminding Slaine that they only checked in the direction to the left of the gate.
"Forget that for the moment. Can you get closer and confirm that there are no other such apparatus in the vicinity," asked Slaine. "It would be very useful if we can use. It is going to simply attacking the bandits by a significant margin."
"Stealth doesn't make me invisible and intangible. I will try but I might get detected," replied Shadow.
"Really?! I never knew," said Slaine sarcastically. "Just try it. It looks like retreating is in our best interests right now. I just want to make sure that we don't waste an opportunity without even making proper reconnaissance," he continued in a serious tone.
"Ok. I just want you to understand that if I am detected, the bandits might immediately start their attempt to get back control of the area that we took. So, you best be prepared for a quick retreat in that case," said Shadow as he went behind a tent.
Shadow decided that he should use the disguise that he used in the lake when he completed the quest from the Merman prince. Using the disguise skill, would have him using rags similar to the style of the Quingol bandits. In stealth, he hoped that even if some bandit noticed him, it might not look twice or suspect him of being a human in that disguise.
Sadly, he was horribly wrong, and he forgot something extremely important. After all, they didn't find a quingol bandit able to use stealth. That skill was not one of the monsters' skills. The bandits were all either berserker or rangers type occupation. Else they would have tried to use stealth to attack the players and with his enhanced perception, it would be hard for him to miss something like that. So, if one of the bandits found someone in stealth, it would immediately raise alarm.
Though Shadow overlooked this fact, his disguise was just in case a bandit noticed him, and he knew that there is a good chance for the bandit to be not fooled by the disguise. So, he had no plans to go into their midst directly, he went closer to the lake and moved into it. He had decided to move underwater and check along the bank first.
It was good decision as he saw that there were more fixed mounted guns along the bank than it was during his last attempt and they were manned by bandits. It was clear that the bandits were fortifying the area in their control before they make their attack.
There were also a number of spots he couldn't see and there is a good chance that the bandits are using the tents to hide more of the new apparatus. Anyways, he knew that the present manpower that Slaine had can no longer get to the transportable mounted gun. The bandits could easily move the transportable gun in range of other mounted guns on the banks of the lake and then it would be a massacre of the players.
He had no further intentions to get deeper into the bandit camp and informed Slaine about the things that he had observed. He also advised them to get back and abandon the camp. Suddenly, an alarm sounded out in the bandit camp.
"Run. They are attacking," said Shadow as he swam in a hurry in a direction away from the mounted guns which the bandits were using. It was lucky that he was underwater, and he didn't find any bandits in the water.
"What happened?" asked Slaine in the team chat.
"It is Foedus Rex. It is the Boris Blade. He stealthed into camp and was caught by the bandits. They somehow learnt of us going through the bandit camp and had come here," said a player in the team chat. Boris Blade was the assassin star player of Foedus Rex. In fact, he was the player that had Shadow's unique weapons in Balthazar's previous life.
The player who reported in the team chat was also an assassin who had a good view of Boris running from the bandits. A moment later Roll also commented on it in the team chat cursing at Boris Blade for mucking up their plans.
"Let us retreat. Shadow also sent pictures of the remaining bandits. We don't have much chance against them," said Slaine in the team chat as he gave everyone the order to retreat of the bandit camp.
Blackrock Town announcement: The quingols in the area around the Canterbury lake are trying to occupy the Canterbury plains.
Mass quest, Quingol Menace started. Kill the Quingols to protect the lands from falling into the Quingols banditry and prevent their attempts of conquest over the Blackrock Town.
The town announcement immediately caused a lot of commotion among the players. A bunch of thread opened up on the forums in discussion of it. It was the first mass quest. A quest that was given to all the players in a region. There were instances of such quests before in other games, but never so early after the game was released.