Artha showed off the loots. Every one was grinning. If they could not use it, these can be sold for lots of coins. Artha's luck was good.
But he wasn't done yet. Time for more experiments. He tried to get more loots by frisking the elite bunny. Tsk! No respect for the dead. You had already manhandled so many times. You still want to continue?
The fellow mates advised Artha that it was useless.
"Give it up, Artha! Elites can drop only 2-3 items."
"Yeah! You are lucky that you got 3 items already."
"Come on man, get up. Just because your luck is good, you can't expect a usual elite monster to drop even more loot. It's getting late. I just want to finish this dungeon already."
Only Sela didn't speak. No! There was another unassuming player in the team who didn't speak. But Artha had already filtered out what others were telling. He could not have survived and continued his studies if he could not filter out talks of other people.
Most, of not nearly all of the independent players played due to passion for game or for monetary benefits. Exhibit A- Jack. Who uses the name Jack in the box. He plain loved gaming. In his opinion, it was the least toxic work environment he ever found. One does wonder where he works if he finds solace in games. Exhibit B - Artha. He wanted money. So the independent players would come in between these two extremes.
What they hated the most? Long dungeons with no end in sight. They had felt alive when they had fought with their lives at line. They had just felt that tickle when they tackl d this elite monster. All were ready to rush forward and feel the rush. But, they were stuck here due to Artha.
Now what is he doing? Monster loot is not enough now you want to mutilated it? Artha wanted to see if he could grab some rabbit meat. The bunny was just there. What's wrong in trying, right? Just thinking about the rabbit meat he may sell made Artha's heart tingle. Or maybe he will just gift it to his master, who was teaching him cooking. The chances of mooching off more skills from him was high.
Bad luck! Either his knife was not sharp enough or his skill was not adequate. Artha refuses to believe any other option like it was impossible to dissect the elite or higher grade monsters. Didn't the game aay never follow the old game rules? But the end result was that he didn't get even a single piece of rabbit meat. Artha had to sigh. If this idea had worked..., he could get meat, fur and a lot more. All the plans, wasted.
Sela just had to say," You can try on others, Artha." Artha brightened, others groaned. Thankfully she continued, "We have to move now. We are cutting the limit as it is." The meaning of it escaped Artha who didn't have time to ask for the clarification. All the members had practically sprinted off to next segment. If he was not near them, the loot from normal monsters would go to next designated team member. He didn't want to lose a single item drop.
Annnd he learnt painfully, how a noob can be played by the veterans even when they were concentrating on other things seriously. And they razzed him.
"Oops, sorry! Thought you could dodge."
"Artha, your dodging skill is so bad!"
"Why did you freeze like a dummy there? Can't you run faster?"
Artha was fuming. He was running fast. He had learnt few tricks while running around and running away, all thanks to the guild people not mingling much with outsiders. It's just that...his spatial awareness was a bit lacking. And truly it's different, running in dungeon is very different from running in the fields.
"Why don't you add points to your dexterity? You can't always kill a monster in a one hit. Why haven't you learnt anything even after playing so long?"
"Why don't you buy boots or something which adds dexterity?"
"Artha, you should buy that skill book. Use it, increase its level and believe me, it's gonna help you so much."
"Jack is right, you know?"
"Yeah! Yeah! You should totally buy that skill book."
"I want that book! It's useful to me."
"Why shouldn't I bid for it? I need that skill too!"
"Oh, so sorry, Artha! I really just wanted to help you. Now you have serious competitors."
"Let the highest bidder win!!!"
"Yeah, ye- What the f*ck? Why did two elites come together?"
The info they had received was that the elite bunnies would come with a gap of 40 seconds. Now, 40 seconds may not seem much but a lot could be done in so much time. Especially when veterans or skilled players put their minds on it.
The tentative plan was to decrease HP of first elite and kite it before tackling the second. Well, there goes the plan! Was the info wrong or the dungeons change the configuration evey time? Something to ponder later.
Artha the glass cannon to rescue. He started to use his only AoE spell, Sunbeam. The hidden effect of this spell was that they monster would loose it's vision for less than a second. That effect could only be triggered if the spell hits monster's eyes though.
And how did Artha learn of it? That's not important now. Anyways, he didn't plan it. It occurred accidentally.
It gave the team enough time to not be 'team wipeout', but it was not easy. Nearly all the players had red HP bars. Sela had to gulp 2 different kinds of HP potions before she could stand and be tank.
(What? It's more than 10 days of game starting. You can not believe that only 2 types of potions are being sold. Artha just sells two best selling and most commonly used potions, that's all. All the other kinds are lying in the room. He will not sell those unless he wants to be persecuted or just wants to make money and die.
Okay, a quick summary. Potions can be of 2 basic types. Dump all the skill at once or do it over the time. Take the first one to pull up your HP or MP bar above red. Take the latter one to get the HP or MP bar to go further, with a small increase every second.
They are considered different potions, so CD(cooldown) will not be affected or interfered.
Thankfully, before the two bunnies smashed into Sela, she was pulled out of hell by few heals. You would think that dying is easy after getting so much practice, but it never is.