Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (16 page)

For Wayne and Jason, the total for their gear was 46 Silver. Dan and I came to 40 Silver. We had 14 Silver left, so there was no chance to get upgrades to our weapons. Although with that 14 Silver, Wayne and I were able to get our new Skills. Taunt and Backstab. Taunt allowed Wayne to gain even more aggro on a mob by taunting it, basically calling it a pussy. Backstab allowed me to hit for even more damage if I used a dagger and stabbed the beasty in its back. Both were going to be very helpful in dealing with those pesky mobs.

But hands down, we were the baddest looking players in the game. As far as I could tell, we were the only group with full armor. And our notoriety was already becoming known. Due to all of my selling, most of the people knew who I was and I would constantly get private messages asking me how I was able to get so much money so quickly. If I didn’t respond, which I never did, I would often get spammed by the same person calling me a cheat and threatening to report me to AltCon. I wasn’t worried about this at all. Funny enough, none of the rogues ever messaged me, although I didn’t have any rogue specific gear.

Jason and Dan got messaged a lot as well, but mostly from other Rangers and Clerics that wanted to ask them how they liked their spells. Jason tended to be polite and responded. Dan tended to respond as Dan always did. And soon after those people stopped messaging Dan.

There was an unspoken code among the Warriors it would appear. No one messaged Wayne, as if they all recognized his superiority, but weren’t going to acknowledge it. Wayne explained it to me and I accepted this as fact, although it seemed silly to me.

The best part about reaching level 10, however, was that we finally got our next quest from Sir Kenyon. Over the past week, each time we leveled, I would go back to Sir Kenyon and ask him for the quest. And each time he would give me the same stupid answer.

Fed up with the whole thing, I went to Sir Kenyon when we all finished getting our gear and spells and told him yet again, “I’m here to answer your stupid ass call.”

“Ah, so you are! And I can see you are a mighty group of adventures who could certainly help the kingdom against the Children of Loust,” Sir Kenyon said.

“Finally! I can’t wait to get out of this area and get on to the next quest!” Dan exclaimed.

“However, before I send you off on your first mission for his majesty, there is a small matter I need you to attend to. As you are aware, this small town is infested with venomous scum that prey on the weak. Namely the children. But we have found the source of this infestation and now know how to rid the area of this vermin. I can call on no one else to help with this problem, as the guards must stay outside the gates to protect the children and you are the only adventurers capable of taking on this foe. Will you help quell the rabbit uprising?”

“Sonovabitch! Are you kidding me? We grinded through five levels so we could fight more fuckin’ rabbits? This guy can eat a bag of dicks!” I would expect those words to come from Dan, or even Wayne when he was really upset. But not a one of us expected those words to come out of Jason. I forgot to reply to Sir Kenyon because we were all staring at Jason.

“Will you help quell the rabbit uprising?” Sir Kenyon asked again.

“Just tell him we will handle the stupid fuckin’ bunnies,” Jason said.

I stumbled through my response, but finally got it through that we would accept the quest. Sir Kenyon was pleased, and beamed a huge smile. It was obvious that he did not register Jason’s words. “Excellent! The ultimate villain in this caper is a Mutated Queen Rabbit, who continues to create these vile beings. She is holed up in the sewers below the city. I have here a key that will give you access to the sewers; however, the Queen’s location is unknown to me. The sewers are large, but I have no doubt you will be able to navigate through them and rid us of this plague. Bring me the Queen’s heart and the entire village will reward you if you are successful!”

Just like that, I had a key in my inventory and a blinking symbol on my map that indicated the entrance to the sewers. It was located, not surprisingly, in The Wastes. And not far from where I encountered the mystery man.

“Soooo. Not a huge fan of the bunnies there are you Alli?” Dan asked.

“I hate those things. I didn’t tell you guys because I thought we were done with them, and I didn’t want to give Dan any more ammunition against me, but I had really bad dreams about those things. Like getting my throat torn out by razor sharp teeth while cute little bunny ears flapped against my face,” Jason said while taking a few deep breaths. Those rabbits really did a number on him it appeared. What none of us knew was that during one of our runs back to the forest to get our bodies after a bad pull, Jason, for whatever reason, was attacked en masse by all the rabbits in the field. That shouldn’t have happened given his level, but it did. He had no intention of telling the guys about any of this, but now he had to.

“That is weird bro, you think it was maybe because your little high elf peen looks like a carrot. It’s not orange is it? Let me see!” Dan said, totally ensuring that Jason would likely never share anything with us again.

I was about to get angry with Dan, as Jason was obviously confiding in us, when much to my surprise Jason said, “That was a good one Dan! I got no comeback. You win on this one.”

Dan turned to give me a high five, but I had already walked around him. I looked over at Jason and he whispered, “Please!”

I nodded my head once. I knew this was going to end bad, but Dan totally deserved it. And since we just got our level 10, none of us would be losing any experience.

We got to the sewer door and I activated the key to open the gate. While we were walking we all came to the conclusion that we should enter simultaneously in case there were any mobs just on the other side of the door. However, as soon as I opened the gate Jason said, “Hey Dan, go check and see if it’s clear for us,” and unceremoniously pushed Dan through the gate and into the sewer.

And it appeared there were in fact mobs on the other side. And they were probably pretty big, if the loss of Dan’s health was any indication. I looked over at Wayne to see if he was going to rush in to save Dan, but he shook his head, “Little fucker had that one coming. Didn’t know you had it in you Allister. Good job.”

After a few minutes Dan came walking back up to the group, minus all his gear. He walked right up to Jason and we all tensed. But then, Dan being Dan, he got the biggest smile on his face and gave Jason a fist bump. “Total. Fuckin’. Balls. Bro. I mean, Total Balls.”

Not a one of us had any clue what that meant. Probably not even Dan.

* * *

Dan told us there were two mobs on the other side of the gate, and each was blue to Dan. Since Dan needed to retrieve his body and get his items, he would be the last one through the door. Wayne would go through first and engage the two mobs. He would hit the first one with Bash and Taunt, and then hit the second one with a Bash, ensuring he would keep aggro. After ten seconds we would go through and Jason would start healing Wayne and I would hit which ever mob Wayne was attacking. We got buffed by Jason, and Dan cast his own self buffs. Then once everyone had full mana, Wayne ventured through the gate. As soon as Wayne stepped through, we weren’t able to see him anymore, but we could see his life bar. He was losing health, but nowhere near as fast as Dan was. That made sense since Wayne had a much higher Armor rating and way more hit points than Dan. After 10 seconds Jason and I went through the gate. Two seconds later, Dan followed.

I immediately targeted the mob Wayne was fighting, A Giant Venomous Bunny. And like you would imagine, that’s what it was. A big ass bunny. Except for where the bunnies in the open field looked like regular rabbits till you got too close and saw their razor sharp teeth, these rabbits were all kinds of messed up. It looked like their fur had mange, and there were a few spots where you could see open sores on their skin. And their eyes were a deep and disturbing red.

Dan quickly equipped all of his gear and started firing at the same rabbit that Wayne and I were attacking. With our low level weapons, the mob went down relatively slow, but we also didn’t need to worry much about Wayne dying given his high armor class and Jason’s latest heal spell. I also got to use Backstab for the first time and I was amazed to see the damage. If I normally hit for 40, with Backstab I was hitting for almost 100. It was close to a 2.5 Modifier. It had a refresh time of four seconds, so I only got to use it sporadically. But when I landed a Critical Strike while using Backstab that first time, I almost shit myself. I hit the mob for 200 damage. And that was with a very low level weapon that only had a +4 Atk Modifier. And my Strength was nothing great, so I wasn’t getting a huge Atk increase from that either.

The group was very happy for me when I yelled out my Critical Strike Backstab amount. Dan stopped firing his arrows to give me a high five. I looked at him and said, “Are you kidding me? Now? You want to do that now? Shoot the damn thing Dan!”

“Oops!” Dan said and got back in the fight.

After just a couple of minutes we had killed both of the mobs. They didn’t drop anything, but they did give a decent amount of copper, 50 pieces each. That’s 1 Silver per two mobs. And I had a feeling there were going to be lots of mobs.

“I can start pulling whenever you guys are ready, but be warned. There is no kiting going on in these little hallways. We may be better off just moving up as a group and killing things as we go until we get to a place that has more room,” Dan informed the group.

This was sound thinking and we all agreed. The other thing that had me worried was that there was no map interface for us to look at. Where our map would normally be, was a grayed out icon, meaning it was not accessible. I relayed my thoughts to the group and asked for their thoughts.

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Dan will be our map master,” Wayne said.

“Duh bro, didn’t you just hear Alex. No map man.”

“Duh doofus, how about you bring that brain of yours “to the table” and just memorize the layout,” Wayne replied.

“Man, that is so not cool. That means I have to be paying attention all the time,” Dan said.

“Wait, are you telling me that when we are playing you aren’t focusing on the game?” I asked.

“Nah Charlotte, I can multi-task. I’ve gotten most of a crossword puzzle done since yesterday.”

“Who the hell is Charlotte?” I asked. My irritation with Dan was coming through loud and clear in my voice.

“Well you are acting like such a Nancy, but I thought I would be witty and use Charlotte. Nice right?” Dan replied.

I was about to lose my temper for real when Jason said, “Which crossword?”

“New York Times bro, the only crossword worth doing. I’m on the Thursday edition,” Dan replied.

“And you’re half way through while also playing the game?” Jason asked. Dan nodded yes and Jason said, “Impressive. Now pay attention to the game.”

Dan had a total look of hurt on his face and said, “Fine. Bunch of party crashers.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Dan, you know a party crasher is someone who goes to a party uninvited, right?”

“That’s dumb-dumb bro. A crash is a bad thing, like when I crashed my dad’s Porsche in the lake. A bad thing. So someone who crashes a party is obviously messing it up. You should write this stuff down Alex.”

“Let’s just move ahead before Dan has to loot his body again,” Wayne said.

I totally forgot to ask Dan how he was doing a crossword during the game.

* * *

All of the mobs that we encountered were blue, and we usually had to take two at a time. On rare occasions we got lucky and only got one mob. Thankfully we hadn’t had to try three at the same time, but I had a feeling it would happen eventually. We were also systematically clearing the sewer. The place was like a maze. Every hallway and intersection looked exactly the same to me. But Dan was keeping track, so he said, and we hadn’t doubled back on ourselves. While we were approaching a larger room, what I hoped would be a boss fight, I heard a whimper coming from a small hallway just to the right of the opening for the large room. It was really more of a nook than a hallway. And when I went to investigate, I found a man huddled on the ground, knees to his chest, and frightened for his life. None of that mattered to me though, because the only thing I was paying attention to was his name, Simon Temple.