End Online: Volume 2 (2 page)

“Incredible,” I exclaim at
the sight, standing just outside the entrance, “The walls appear almost man
made at parts. Does anyone know what this dungeon is called?”

“I honestly have no clue,
it may even be undiscovered until now,” Verde looks just as astonished at the
sight, pole torches are inserted into the ground in no particular order,
lighting the tunnel with flickering yellow lights. Also while there is water
dripping from some parts of the roof there is absolutely no ice in this cave.

“Given how well hidden
this whole place is and the fact that most players don’t tend to go more south
than Iceridge, I think we may possibly be the first people here. But there
is no way to be completely sure.” Verde has a point with what she says, there
is also the fact this game is only a few months old too.

“Anyway,” I decide it is
time to venture in, “We need to decide on the formation for this par-“

“Forget
it!” Prince Charming cuts me off rather aggressively, “
We
 will do
what we want. My lady, please follow behind me for protection.”

And this is exactly why I
don’t like other players, selfish right to the core. Should I consider them as
trying to steal my kills and just kill them now? They will not be able to find
this place as I left the city in the wrong direction and slowly made course
corrections to get back here. It is at this moment that Verde speak up with a
compromise.

“Well this isn’t going to
work now is it. Boys and their testosterone..” Verde sighing as she shook her
head, “How about we go in as two teams of two and just stick to each other. You
go with your wolf, and I will stick with Prince Charming here.” She lets out a
small giggle when she calls him by the nickname and his face dyes crimson.

“I suppose that will
work.” I give a small shrug. Basically we support them and they support us. I
honestly trust Fen a lot more than them so working with just her is fine by me.

We all head into the
dungeon in no orderly fashion and with no formation. This could easily be
one of the worst parties in all history. A small message appears in the corner
of my vision saying ‘Entering Unknown Goblin Lair’

Just a short walk in and
we encounter our first group of goblins, about eight of them turn a corner and
seem just as surprised as we are to be facing each other.

I guess the goblins down
here aren’t much different from the surface, raising various rusted
weapons. One is equipped with a mace which is a little surprising, but not
so much for me to worry.

Prince Charming and Verde
are the first two to make a move, dashing forward while they are still stunned
to initiate the attack. I activate ‘Creature Analysis’ on them to view their
information, my now level 9 skill being successful where it previously failed.

 “Come Fen, let’s go
attack too. They aren’t that tough!” I’m sure Fen is already aware of exactly how
tough they are, she has killed hundreds already after all.

The other two have just
started engaging them, Prince charming at the front blocking nearly every
attack with his kite shield, but a few slip past his defence and graze his
armour. Verde however thanks to that did not have a scratch on her, using a
pitch black dagger to slash the goblins that tried to flank around and surround
them.

‘I wonder what type of player Verde
is, Prince Charming is clearly the knight in shining armour, but she is a mystery’ 
I think to myself wondering if she has some class skill, there
are plenty of mid to high level players who have stumbled across them. She
appears to be something resulting in stealth, like a ninja, assassin, or thief.

It was a good dagger by
the look of it, but the goblins tough skin was removing half of the damage due
to her attacks being too slow. I had honestly thought earlier that being level
72 would cause her to easily be able to deal with the goblins, but that thought
was wrong.

Seeing a level 72 player
struggling against level 35 monsters really showed the difference how the
level of a player didn’t determine how strong they were yet the level of a
monster did.

Fen’s and my speed towards
the goblins couldn’t be compared to the other two, we crossed the distance in
half the speed that they had. Placing my swords in their scabbards I throw all
five of my throwing knives at the goblins while circling the
group to fight against the enemies the Prince was defending against
at the front.

I dance around
and through the goblins, maintaining the speed of my attacks with
twists and turns, but I suffered a few glancing blows from weapons I couldn’t
completely dodge.

Prince Charming managed to
land a few small blows with his longsword between defending attacks but the
damage was minimal, some of his slashes not even penetrating their skin.

My new weapon was a
fantastic help, landing a critical hit on ones neck with my speed completely
penetrating their defence, removing more than half of one of the goblins
health.

On the other side,
fighting the three goblins that have tried to flank around were Verde and Fen.
One goblin is near death from Verde’s constant slashes and stabs but she
herself has lost a good portion of her health as a result, about thirty percent
to be exact.

Fen came to the rescue
however, launching her ever so familiar ice bolts at the enemy as she
approached. Three crude javelins of ice fly through the air, each penetrating a
goblin each, killing one. One of the ice bolt however went most of the way
through a goblin at such an angle it stopped less than an inch of Verde’s face,
causing all colour to drain out of it.

“I know they seem to be a little
difficult to fight with Fen, but isn’t that a bit much?’ 
I think seeing her attack nearly causing friendly fire.

Fen followed up with
another ice technique that I had not witnessed yet. She slashed her
paw two meters away from the goblins, blades of ice tracing the path of
her attack, cutting the remaining two goblins in half, quickly ending their lives.

I had taken out two
goblins already, and the other three have their attention now on me
instead of attacking Prince Charming. The knight could have taken the
initiative and helped attack the leftover goblins but he abandoned me to then
to rush over to Verde, revealing his magic to be for healing as he tended her
wounds.

Fen also left the enemies
to me, but that was out of politeness as I had it under control. I learnt from
my past mistakes about being surrounded by goblins and just how tough they could
be. By manoeuvring myself around I manage to prevent them completely encircling
me and the resulting battle only lasted moments.

My sacred arts
unfortunately couldn’t be used until the end of the battle as even if the
damage was greater, the system assist would take over my movements and I would
not be able to alter my position to dodge or block any goblin attack that came
my way.

After retrieving my
throwing knives, I do the right thing and split up the loot equally
between the three of us players, although the only valuable thing that dropped
was a few copper coins. There was a plain silver necklace dropped from the last
goblin I killed, but I grabbed that before anyone else could notice.

We all sit against a wall
to rest and I inspect the party menu, just to see the damage that was done from
this one squad of goblins.

It looks like Prince
Charming gained a level, but he has also used nearly half his mana healing
Verde after just one battle. The issue is mana takes quite some time to
regenerate, unless he has the abnormally expensive mana potions or a skill like
‘Meditation’ that allows for faster recovery his mana would take more than an
hour to regenerate.

Fen is a bit unusual with
mana recovery, maybe it’s because she is a beast or her ‘Queen Class’ but it
regenerates about four times faster than a player. Her skills also are
reasonably mana efficient, using the same amount no matter the scale of the
attack.

Sitting on the ground I
pull out a few green medicinal herbs and eat them to recover health, it does
naturally regenerate but the speed is incredibly slow and pointless. Slowly
consuming the herbs my health begins to recover at one point a second, useless
in battle but effective in between fights.

Since my ‘Herbalism’ skill
has improved I have notice the effects of herbs has slightly improved, I would
imagine that would make my potions slightly better but I haven’t tested it.

Fen comes up to me and
nudges my hand that’s holding more herbs. Seriously, how did she get hurt, I
didn’t see her get a single scratch.

“Okay Fen, have some of
these herbs, it will slowly heal you up.”

The effects of the herbs
only work if I administer them so I feed them directly to Fen by placing them
in her mouth. She doesn’t make any complaints but her tail wags
while chewing them.

“What was with those
goblins?!” Verde breaks the silence with a shocked voice first, “They had an
unnaturally high defence, they are usually much easier to kill!”

“No clue, honestly I was a
little surprised at first too, I have always considered goblins to be
incredibly weak enemies in games. Yet a small group of them surrounded and
killed me the first time I encountered them. I assumed they are all like that.”

“No, not at all. I have
been to the Kingdom of Forste before and fought goblins there. The damage they
do and their appearance is the same, but the natural defence in these goblins
is just unreal, I couldn’t deal any proper damage at all!”

“Hmm.. Maybe it is the
environment we are in. As in, the goblins have naturally gotten a tougher skin
to help fight the cold weather. It just happens to double as a high defensive
bonus.”

“I agree with that,”
Prince Charming joined the conversation, “But it is the degree of change that
is different. I haven’t fought against other goblins but hearing Verde I think
it is something else. Ice trolls are said to have an incredibly tough natural
armour and I after fighting them I can say it is nothing compared to these
goblins.”

“Compared to the goblins I
fought in Forste these ones give about three times the experience points too.”

“Well,” I speak in an
exhausted tone, “There is not point dwelling on a reason too much. Let’s
continue with exploring this dungeon and see what we can find.”

We all stand up and
continue down the path, the corridor splits into three paths. Against Prince
Charming’s brilliant idea to split up and explore different routes, I tell them
we will stick together since encountering a group of goblins with only half of
us will be fatal.

We take the first path on
the left with a game of rock, paper, scissors. We start to regret not having
someone with a map making skill so we can map out where we are and where we
have gone.

We encounter three more
groups of goblins, each taking a decent toll on our health and magic. Prince
Charming ran out of mana after the second encounter but he had some decent
mana potions on him that restored is magic.

Each time we rested in
between encounters, Fen somehow managed to get mysterious wounds that led me to
having to feed her herbs to heal them. My ‘Aggravation’ skill, now at level 34,
was torture on me as often I could even taunt the entire group of goblins to
attack me alone.

We maintain roughly the
same formation, Prince Charming leading the defence, me at the front, Verde and
Fen at the rear. Although the Prince only looked out for Verde, abandoning
me to a few onslaughts in the heat of battle. I feel a little ripped off that I
only get five projectiles per encounter as I don’t have to luxury to be able to
retrieve them during the fights.