Armageddon Chapter 2
"Sis, I need a heal."
"Okay," I said as I dropped my pen and grabbed the gamepad. I held
button 10 then pressed button 1 to use the equipped artifact, the Glove
of Lesser Recovery.
"Sis, you've just healed that monster!
I did? I lowered the VR goggle and looked through the screen. "Oh
crap!" I said as I nudged the right analog a little to the left. My
fingers must've nudged the pointer at some point.
"Shit, I died!" my brother whined when his HP bar went down to zero.
I held button 10 and pressed button 2 to use Ankh of Minor Revive.
Then I shot 4 pieces of lead to the zombie's limbs to weaken it before
my brother finished it for the XP.
"Why is it that you still need aid against a zombie?" I asked as he picked up his loot.
"Well, because sword skills are hard to use," he said with his big
butt and big breasts swinging around everytime he bent over to pick up the
scattered loot. If this was reality, he'd already have a sore back
"Nobody told you to pick Neet."
"It's because I can't pick Sniper that I pick Neet."
"You could've just picked Soldier, you can advance to Gunman."
"Gunman sucks. My friend said he fired 8 times with his dual guns and the shots went everywhere but the target!"
"Well, dual wielding does have accuracy issues."
"And Sniper is impossible!"
Let me explain a little. Being a sniper is NOT impossible at all. The
only problem is for some reason, players whose avatar have big breasts
suffer accuracy issues with all kinds of rifles, including sniper rifle.
Now go back a little bit in time and notice that I say his character
has big butt and big breasts. See the problem? Yeap, my brother is a
breast man. I suppose he's an ass man too.
His character's breasts size are even twice bigger than mine in real
life. Does he think that the value of girls are only in their breasts?
If that's what he really thinks, I'll tell mom.
Still, my value as a girl is in neither breasts nor ass. It's my
brain. And my gorgeous long legs. Oh, I have a pretty face too, if I may
add. I know men made a double take when I walk past them on the street
in my casual clothes, even the men who were walking with their
girlfriends. Oh my, I'm blushing.
"Sis."
"Yes?"
"How much do you think this is worth?"
I pushed down the visor part of my headset and saw him pointing to a rusty magic sword.
"Were you fighting a [zombie knight]?" Since [zombie knights] were about the only low level zombie that dropped magic items.
"Didn't you see earlier?"
"No, I was studying."
"So how much can I make with this?"
I looked at the unidentified rusty magic sword. Then I tried searching my memory for an average price for rusty magic swords. I knew I
came across a few in the past few years in the auction houses, but since
I had always been a rifle-wielder, I didn't take much notice of the
swords. I can use it of course, since the nature of the game allows
every character to wield every weapon in the game, as long as the stats
allow it. But what would be the point of me wielding a sword? It would
be like giving a man a bow and telling him to go fishing.
"I think you can get between 20-40 Euro in the auction houses."
"No, not the auction houses, how much will I get with dollars for example?"
"Stop there! It is against game rules to sell game items for real
world money. You will get banned and your headset ID blacklisted. Heck,
even I will probably be banned since we're playing using the same VRPwr2
unit."
"What? I can't sell this for real money? God damned! There goes my
perfect plan!" He swung his sword against a tree repeatedly as if trying
to vent his frustration.
"You planned to sell game items for real world money?"
"Of course! That's why I invested in the headset in the first place. My perfect plan is in ruins..."
So buying the headset wasn't actually a boy's short-sighted quest for
fun? He actually considered recouping the money spent by making money
from the game itself? That was unexpected. I didn't know my pest of a
brother actually thought ahead. He should still read the terms of use in
the first place, though.
I sighed, thinking I should help him a little. If he did
well, surely he could pitch in with the game's monthly fees or
something. "If you want to make money from the game, I can probably help
you in a way."
"Really?" He stopped swinging his sword at the tree.
"Yup, but not through item selling. Once you can kill an [elder necromancer] on your own, talk to me about making money."
"But [elder necromancer] is a D level monster!"
"If you want to make money, you need to be able to beat up at least D
level monsters, better if you can beat C, but that may take too long
for you."
"What level can you defeat now, sis?"
"Remember the monster rampage in London last week? That was upper
level B. I won because its HP was already depleted from being attacked
by other players."
Suddenly I heard the sound of a bell in the real world.
"Hey, go play somewhere. Take this," I tossed him the [glove of lesser recovery], the same one I used to heal his HP.
"You're really giving this to me, sis?" he or she, the character in
the game, looked at me in awe. At least I assumed that was 'awe', VR
games hadn't advanced far enough yet to be able to create facial
expressions through a person's emotions. There were in-game emoticons
that could be used to show emotions, but most people just used it to play around.
As for why I said he could be in awe, it was because recovery
equipments, as opposed to food and potions are very rare in Armageddon.
People who wanted to heal without using potions or food would normally
sit somewhere safe and heal through passive healing, use a doctor or
priest for quick healing, or pay a hospital or clinic for full healing.
"Yes, it's no longer as useful to me anymore," I said, since the
glove healed only 20 HP per use. My HP was already 600 in total. If I
used the the glove to heal myself, I wouldn't be able to fight.
"Thanks!" he said as his avatar ran along a side street, probably looking for more zombies.
I logged out of the game and took off the headset. Then I looked at
the computer screen in front of me, bringing up the corresponding gahoo
chat message. It was from Sara aka Nutcase, the demolitionist and suicide bomber.
"Hey Ria, how's it going?"
"You have a reason for disturbing my study time, Sara?"
"Oh you were studying? Haha, sorry. It's just that something came up."
"And what would that be? If you tell me your laundry flew off again, I will snipe you next time I see you."
"Oh poo! That was a real distress, if you don't know. Who knows what
kind of evil a pervert would do if he got his hands on my well-worn lacy
bra."
"You're the biggest pervert around. I'm busy."
"Wait wait."
"Waiting."
"Don't you want to take part in liberating Athens?"
"Athens fell?"
"Yeah, 6 hours ago. It was broadcasted throughout the world, just like that time when they lost Rome."
"I was at school, sorry."
"So you wanna join?"
"I got exams coming up."
"It's a paid job."
My ears perked up, despite this being a text conversation. "Details?"
"We got two employers to choose from. One's the Crimean Alliance,
they pay in real world money, but only hires high level players. The
other's Graeco-Roman Initiative, they pay in in-game currency and
in-game bonus for high contribution."
"Tell me more about Crimean Alliance," I typed before going back to my math homework.
"Crimean Alliance is a guild of salary workers and self-employed
players who are based in Athens. They're generally mid-level players but
they regularly use real world money to pay players to stop demon
excursions around Athens. This time they were too late, so their home
city got invaded. Right now they supposedly have a budget of almost 800
Euro to hire mercenaries. They can't log in because the central warp
crystal is crawling with demons and they need to wait 60 hours from the
time of the invasion before they can change spawn location."
"Any problem with the admins?" I wouldn't want to be banned after working on my character for so long.
"Some accusations, but since money and items didn't change hands
through their system and negotiations were done using outside softwares,
they had no proof."
"Will there be any problem?"
"Minimal, the Crimean Alliance had done this many times before. There is no risk."
"Payment?"
"There's 5 of us. 10 Euro each."
"Are you freaking joking with me? Ask for more, my bullets aren't cheap."
"But you can get bullets from the Sanctuary Warehouse daily."
"Normal bullets. I use armour-piercing, high-explosive, acid, poison
and holy bullets. Those are expensive and not available everywhere. The
only place that sold holy bullets was in Rome."
"It will be hard to ask for more. They won't be very generous with their real world money."
"Tell them to contact me themselves then. Wasn't I the hero who killed the Monster of Trafalgar Square?"
"Fine. You okay with me giving him your Gahoo ID?"
"Yea-wait. Make sure he's not a stalker pervert or a network hacker before you give him my ID."
"Still got a phobia, huh?"
"Don't you know it." I shivered recalling the memory of being stalked by a computer hacker a year ago.
I was chatting like normal when this guy came out of nowhere and
asked to chat. I humoured him. We chatted about many things until he
offered to do cam-to-cam and voice chat. I agreed and there came the
face of a caucasian man probably in his early twenties. To tell the
truth, I had a little crush on him the first time I saw his face. He
wasn't ugly at all, for start, and his voice was quite dreamy. The level
of our chat raised a little since then, going from the subject of
favourite food and daily complains to being alone at home and the colour
of my panties and the kind of bra I wore at any given day.
I flirted back good-naturedly, since it felt nice doing dirty chats a
bit on the net. He managed to make me hot often that I... maybe I
shouldn't say that. Anyway, my face was clearly transmitted to the other
side and he definitely seemed to like it. Then I stopped chatting for a
few days to concentrate on my studies.
When I came back online, he had sent all kinds of creepy messages.
Such as, "What are you doing in just your underwear on the bed, sweety?"
or "I know the colour of your panties today," or "I want to touch your
pretty butt," or "Don't ignore me, bitch. I know you're at your desk."
That scared me so much that I didn't turn my computer on for days.
When I did, he sent me a download link for a movie. When I downloaded it
and watched it, it was a video of me changing clothes in my room.
From the viewpoint, it was from my own webcam. I was very scared and
didn't know what to do. I sat alone in my room for hours until I ripped
out the USB cable for my webcam and called Sara for help. Sara was my
neighbour a little further down the street back then and left for
Germany a few months later. I didn't know what I would've done without
her.
She came over right away and comforted me as best as she could,
pulling my face into her very prominent bosom. She asked me if anyone
else knew. I told her no, as if I would tell my family about this in the
first place. She told me that it was pointless calling the police,
since the problem still wouldn't be solved and once my family found out
they would just take away my computer. There was also the issue of my
spycam video, the police could ask the site admins to take down the
video, but the stalker still had the original video, and probably a
whole lot more videos than the one he showed me.
So Sara told me to reattach the webcam and contact that stalker. He
looked happy to see me, but then his expression changed when he saw my
crying face. Sara then pulled me off my chair and chatted with that guy,
telling him that she was my big sister. Despite Sara having bigger
breasts and a mature beauty, he didn't seem attracted to her at all and
kept asking to chat with me.
Sara, blessed her, managed to talk him down. Sara told him to destroy
the videos, but he refused, saying that he loved me so much he wouldn't
be able to sleep without seeing me. Eventually, he agreed to keep my
naked videos locked and that he wouldn't hack into my PC anymore. His
conditions was that I continued to chat with him daily and that I set
aside a few days around my 18th birthday to meet him for a date. Maybe I
was just a masochist, but I agreed. I was 15 back then.
Now, a year after, I feel a little lonely. Sure, he was a creep, but
he was a handsome creep. And even after the compromise, he genuinely
cared for me and my complains. He was sort of like 'a creepy best friend
who has an abnormal carnal crush on a schoolgirl' kind of person.
Sometimes I would ask his help to hack some youtube asshole's computer
as a prank. After about half a year though, our daily conversations
became something like bland greetings, asking what's new, and then being
quiet for a long time until one of us logged off. Sometimes I
complained and he would listen, but it was obvious he was bored. When I
pointed it out to him, he admitted it. He said he still loved me but he
wished he didn't agree with our compromise back then. I told him to
watch my naked videos again whenever he felt horny, and he laughed
good-naturedly, but he said he wanted something fresh. Now we hardly
chatted with each other anymore.
Of course, since that compromise, I ensured the webcam's cable was
pulled out whenever I wasn't using it. I wouldn't let him take nude
videos of me anymore. But anyway, that incident was in the past.
At night, I received a message on my gahoo. No, it wasn't the stalker, it was apparently the leader of the Crimean Alliance.
"Good evening, are you Doomgunner in Armageddon Europe?"
"Yes, who are you?"
"I am Alexander Nikolaidis. I go by the same name in the game Armageddon. I am the co-leader of the Crimean Alliance."
Same name in-game and in real-life? This guy is weird.
"My name is Ria. Yes, I am Doomgunner. How can I help you?"
"Are you aware of the fact that Athens fell some hours ago?"
"I am aware of that."
"We, the Crimean Alliance are hiring mercenaries to retake Athens. We
offer real world money of the currency of your choice in exchange for
your services in the liberation of Athens."
"Any currency?"
"Any major currency. It will be transferred to your bank once the objective is
achieved. As for your fee, I have been cleared to pay you 30 Euro upon
the completion of the mission."
30 Euro is quite something. That could feed me for like five days, if
for some reason mom wouldn't feed me. From the looks she gave me
everytime she saw me playing with VrPwr though, I didn't doubt that it
would happen one day.
"Can you state clearly the objective of the mission?"
"There are 5 objectives. Primary objective is the annihilation of all
demonic entities inside the municipality of Athens. Secondary
objectives are: Destruction of the demon's recall crystal; Death of all
10 demon summoners; Construction of 5 watch towers around Athens;
Destruction of the closest Hellgate to Athens."
"That's pretty hard. Hellgates are very well protected. Even if you
have 100 players together, assaulting Hellgates will mean extremely
heavy losses."
"Of course we are aware of the dangers, the mission is considered
complete once Athens is liberated. The secondary objectives are not
necessary, but welcomed. The parties that successfully completed the
objectives will receive bonus pay."
"How much are we talking about?"
"Destruction of recall crystal - 10 Euro, death of all 10 summoners -
10 Euro, construction of 5 watch towers - 15 Euro, destruction of
Hellgate - 50 Euro."
"For each person?"
"No, it's group bonus. For example, if 20 players participate in
destruction of recall crystal, each will be paid additional 0.5 Euro. I
doubt you would need more than 10 players to destroy a recall crystal,
though."
"What about reinforcements?"
"None during the battle except for other mercenaries. Upon completion
of the main objective, Crimean Alliance members will spawn in Athens
and take over sentry duties."
"When will the mission start?"
"9 PM Saturday, your time. Do you accept this mission?"
"Yes, who do I report to?"
"You will be part of the First Support Squad, your Squad leader is
Olson Welles. Please go to this link for your group chat. Do you have
any further questions?"
"No."
"Very well. We look forward to your success. Good day."
Hoooo, 30 Euro, for just a few hours work. That's way more than
what my sister make as a Sugar Beats employee. If only these kinds of
jobs come everyday. I'm definitely going to take those secondary
objectives, alone if possible. 65 Euro within a single day, that's nice.
I won't bother with the Hellgate mission, since it needs a few hundred
players together to destroy it. The amount of demons protecting
Hellgates are simply massive.
Seeing as I would be fighting a large scale battle in two days, I
decided to practice. Unlike other games, the cities of Armageddon are
faithfully modeled following its real world self. In other words, the
city of Athens would be huge. If one were to spend their time exploring
the Armageddon version, they would be as familiar to the city just like a
local. I aced a few of my geography tests because of that.
Putting my pen down and my books away, I picked up my headset
and wireless gamepad. I kicked my brother to the other side of the bed
as I plopped down on the bed, put on the headset and started the game. As usual, I
went through the game start screen and emerged at the central
warp crystal of the city of London. My avatar's fingers touched the warp crystal and a list of locations I previously registered to appeared. I chose Milltown Malbay, in Ireland. It
was time to start killing the boss monsters of Hy-Brasil.
It was part of a chain quest that I acquired after taking on a quest
of clearing out the entire library of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin
of demons. I don't want to brag, but I did it all alone. Armed with my
trusty assault rifle, I took on hundreds of level C demons within a
manner of hours. The fight against the boss demon itself took almost an
hour and hundreds of bullets. It was a tough fight. For my troubles, the
boss demon dropped the Unique item The Book of Hy Brasil as well as
other more regular drops.
Maybe I need to give a short explanation about item quality in
Armageddon. The quality of items, whether equipments, potions, artifacts
and the like range from Poor up to Ancient. The order would be Poor
being the lowest, followed by Inferior, Common, Uncommon, Magic, Rare,
Epic and Ancient. Out of all these, each quality had their own ups and
downs, mostly in the form of power and price. Needless to say, the
higher the quality of an item is, the pricier it becomes. The power of
the higher quality items are also generally better than those with lower
quality, whether in terms of damage, bonuses or special attacks. Items
with Ancient quality are always more powerful, but also more brittle.
The hero of Paris, Christophe Arceneau destroyed the Hellgate near Paris
within hours of its appearance, alone. He was decked in ancient armour,
ancient axe, ancient arquebus and ancient amulets. He succeeded in
destroying the Hellgate, but lost his ancient equipments due to low
durability and was killed by the mass of the remaining demons.
As for Unique items, they're different. Equivalently, they range from
Common to Ancient, with varrying powers and bonuses. The only different
is that they're limited in number. For example, there is only one Spear
of Longinus, a Unique item at Ancient quality, currently owned by a
member of the Knights of Rome. Similarly, there are only two Book of Hy
Brasil. From the bonuses, I assume it is simply the equivalent of Rare.
I looked up the story of the book on the internet and it was true.
The book was real, as in it exist in real life. In-game though, I'm going to spare you the details and simply say
that the book not only started the next leg of the chain quest, but also
granted a permanent Intelligence score of 20, 5HP per second passive
healing and 2000HP active healing that could be activated every four
hours. I also got an ability labelled 'Beacon of Hy Brasil', which from
the description, allowed me to summon the island of Hy Brasil no matter
where in the Atlantic Ocean I was. It was a fantastic drop, even if it
didn't give the quest. Regrettably, this particular drop disappeared
after I used it, so I couldn't resell it to others. But I got the
permanent Intelligence, passive healing and active healing ability. So
everything's fine.
Still, since I got the book, I could go to the Island of Hy Brasil,
the first ever player to have ever set foot on that mythical island
surrounded by mist in the middle of nowhere. As for why I was going to
Milltown Malbay, that town was the only place in western coast of Ireland
that had a warp crystal. I didn't want to spend hours riding from
Limerick. Unlike the rest of Europe, the British Isles are pretty safe
from the demon apocalypse, with new Hellgates quickly brought down by
the combined strength of the local guilds. Therefore, there was not much
need for the Order of Divine Mercy to construct warp crystals in the
British Isles, preferring to divert their logistical and military
resources to the European mainland.
By the way, the Order of Divine Mercy is also known as 'gamemaster'.
It is a guild of gamemasters, who are also players paid by the
developers of Armageddon with weekly resources in order to help players
push back the demon hordes. Right now, 5 out of 6 gamemasters were
focused on European mainland, with two of them focusing on liberating Rome.
They conducted events regularly to gain players' assistance in pushing
the battle lines. They also have their own AI armies, but are not
allowed to use them except as part of an event. Any guilds who want to
aid in the liberation events often have to submit a proposal to the
gamemasters to get in-game funding.
I warped into the the town of Milltown Malbay from London. It was a
small thriving town, filled with NPCs and players who hunted demons in
the surrounding countryside. The level of demons in this vicinity was
rather low, mostly of the rank E and D, so it was a good place for
beginner players. As I materialized, I immediately became the center of
attention, probably because of my gear. Unlike the new players, I was
wearing an Ancient Breastplate of St. Dunstan as well as one sniper
rifle and one assault rifle on my back. On my belt, I had one Sig Sauer
P226 firmly in its holster, with four magazines also strapped to the
belt.
I am one of the opinion that you only need one magazine to kill
anything. If you need to use all four magazines at any given event, you
would be better off just running away. If four magazines couldn't kill a
target, there's a very slim chance that six magazines would make a
difference. Either way, if you need more than four magazines to down
something, it isn't the weapon's problem, it's the user's problem. I
have seen many who fired full spreads of assault rifle bullets on a
single demon. I am not one of those idiots.
"Never thought I'd see a Pulsed Plasma Sniper Rifle. They only give that as event rewards."
Correct. It was an event reward.
"I'd like to have his breastplate. That's obviously an Rare Unique at least."
It's Ancient Unique, you noob. There're only 4 of these in the whole world.
"I think I've seen him before."
Really? If there's someone as handsome and as caddish as my character in real life, I'd like to marry him.
"Hey, isn't that the Hero of Trafalgar Square?"
Oh, that's what she meant.
"Come to think of it, he does look familiar."
Well, duh! If you watched the video I uploaded to the Armageddon
Hall of Scenes, you'd know. I made over $200 from the 700,000 viewership
royalty for the past week alone. Money, best colour in the world.
"It's him! I watched the video on bootube!"
Wait, somebody uploaded it on bootube? Who the fuck cheated me of
my income? I'm definitely gonna report this. I wonder if I got 'cheers'
or 'boos', though.
"Umm, hello. I'm a fan of your videos. Would you sign my sniper
rifle?" a young girl character came up to me and presented me her sniper
rifle, a Hans-Wesley Coil-action Sniper Rifle. This thing is rare,
must've costed her a fortune.
"Sure," I said as I opened the signature window and wrote my real
world signature, Ruria, onto the side of the weapon using the touchpad. I
just couldn't be bothered with designing a completely separate signature
for my in-game character.
In Armageddon, since there's no such thing as levels or level requirements, most people end
up suffering from having powerful weapons, but low attributes and stats
to use them. Therefore, most people use lower level weapons to
compensate. However, this means that their attack power are weak. To
overcome this, Armageddon uses a system called 'Signature' which allows
players to enchant their equipment so it become a living item. The
weapon or equipment receives 50% bonus stats from the person signing it.
As the person who signed it grows, so will the weapon grow together.
There are several restrictions, though. An equipment can only have one
signature. An equipment can only be signed by the classes that use them
as primary weapons (snipers can't sign a sword, axes and pikes can't be
signed). The equipment can't be either Epic, Ancient or Unique.
"Thanks, can we be friends?" the girl asked.
"Sure," I said as I friendlisted her. Her name was Celixia. Cute name.
I should mention that in Armageddon, one could only send whispers to people they had friendlisted.
"Where are you heading to now?"
"I'm going on a quest west of Ireland."
"Can I come along? I'm a pretty good sniper."
"What level can you defeat?"
"I can kill several D level monsters now in less than 3 minutes."
"Unless you have a strong party, no. The place I'm going is crawling with B level monsters. You'll die in seconds."
"I have a party, together we can kill lower B monsters," the girl said, looking excited.
To her, this was probably a good place to farm skill experience.
"Fine, call them. I'll wait for 5 minutes," I said, thinking that
even if they would die, at least they would be able to buy me enough
time as distraction while I enter the Ruined Temple of Breasal, to
slaughter the Irish god Breasal, who'd be minding his own business until
I come along and kill him.
Please forgive me, Breasal, a quest is a quest after all.
"Can we join too?" the bystanders came and asked.
There were twelve of them, not including Felixia's party. I shrugged.
I wanted to rent a small row boat but from the looks of it, I'd have
to rent a charter boat instead.
"Fine, but space is limited. The highest level ones gets to go," I said as I head to the pier to search charter boats for rent.
I got one that could take all of us. At my prompting, the players all
pitched in with their own money for the rent fees, seeing as this place
would be a great place to increase their skills. It was a great day, I
double-charged everyone. Because of that, I got to rent a boat without
having to pay the boat owner with my own money and still make a lot of
profit. Money, the best colour in the world, even if it's digital
currency.
Once we boarded the boat, I activated the Beacon of Hy-Brasil and chanted the words using the microphone attached to my headset.
Iarraim ar an Rí na Gheimhridh,
An té a fuil a chroí sioc,
An té a anáil a scaoileadh amachs ceo,
An té a seithí dóibh siúd ar mian leo a bheith i bhfolach,
Impigh mé leat,
Oscail an mbealach seo,
Is mian liom chos a chéim
ar an Oileán Hy-Brasil.
Nothing happened. I chanted again. Nothing happened again. That was
until one of the players, who happened to be Irish, said that he
recognized some of the words and asked me to allow him to give it a go. I
shared with him the chants and he pronounced it in sounds that didn't
match the spelling at all. How the heck did the creator of the quest
even expect people to finish the quest if it had to be spoken in Irish
tongue?
Anyway, mist then appeared out of nowhere and inside the mist, we
could see the silhuette of an island. I instructed the boat driver NPC
to navigate towards the island. As we entered together, each of us
received the Explorer of Hy-Brasil achievement, signifying that we were
the first to enter the island. Which meant that each of us would get
double the skill experience over a period of 3 days. Perfect!
******
"Alright guys, I have to go do my quest now. See you at the boat later. By the way, do not even dare to leave without me."
"Can I go with you?" a guy in swordsman outfit stepped closer. He was
one of those who could barely kill a C level monster even with his
entire party helping.
"No, this is a B level quest, you won't survive."
"I can be the tank. My swordskill is great!"
I doubt it. From what I could see, you were just as noobish as my brother.
"No, there's no need. I'll be fine on my own."
"Come on, you can't beat a B level quest on your own."
Why is this guy so annoying? Can't he take a hint?
"For your information, I already beat a B level quest on my own.
That's how I got to come here," I said as I unslung my sniper rifle. I
climbed a big rock and then pointed my pulsed plasma sniper rifle at the
ground.
This is going to hurt, greatly.
"No way, stop acting tough. I can help," the noob swordsman
arrogantly offered his help, as if he would be able to actually do
something.
"No thanks, I don't need you," I said as I fired the pulsed plasma
sniper rifle at the ground at EXCEED power. The shockwave reduced my HP
by almost 200 and gave critical damage to my feet, but it propelled me
up the sky and got me away from that annoying noob in the blink of an
eye.
Of course, landing would be another matter altogether. Not to mention
that this place was crawling with lower B level monsters. I would need
to do some quick massacre the moment I landed. Then it would be time for
my trusty 'Ambush' skill to show its usefulness again.
******
"Great god, how many of them are here?" I asked myself after killing
about a hundred [beast elves] and [unicorns] inside the Ruined Temple of
Breasal.
At first, it was easy, snipe a few of the monsters, and then use the
Ambush skill as camouflage. Once the cooldown timer ended, I would snipe
again and then hide again. Unfortunately, as I proceeded deeper into
the underground temple, the number of overhead crystal light increased and
the hallways were brighter as well as longer and straighter. It came to a
point where it was impossible to hide, even with the Ambush skill. I had
to shoot some of the overhead crystal lights on the ceiling a few times
to make myself some hiding spots.
Unfortunately the darkness inside the temple also made it possible to
encounter [wraiths] who were attracted to the darkness beyond light.
Even the dark spots that I had cleared earlier would be no use. The
[wraiths] could teleport. Whether they teleported from somewhere else or
materialized out of thin air I had no idea. [Wraiths] are upper C level
monsters, so it wasn't an easy creature to beat. Plus, unlike the
[beast elves], [wraiths] could only be harmed by holy, blessed or light
bullets. I hated fighting [wraiths] because they were about the most
expensive non-demon monsters to fight and dropped no loot.
Unless if one counts the [darkness fragments] which is useless, as a
loot. Its only used to craft darkness bullets and darkness weapons,
which is equally useless since it doesn't harm demons. Darkness weapons
can only harm angels and since angels aren't hostile, it's pointless. So
[wraiths] is often called, [useless demons].
Finally, after fighting three dozens more monsters, I arrived at the
Hall of Breasal, which looked like a meadow despite being underground.
The god of the wilds, the giant Breasal, held a pike in his hand as he
spoke of something in Irish, which I couldn't understand a single word
of, so I didn't bother. Without letting him finish his words, I fired my
sniper rifle as a greeting. That initiated combat.
Breasal charged forward, brandishing his pike as if it was as light
as wood. With my high Agility score though, I managed to avoid it
easily. Unlike other idiots, I didn't spend time developing my other
stats. A sniper wasn't supposed to be seen, heard nor attacked. A sniper
hid and fired from the most convenient places.
Breasal, seeing me evade his first attack, swung his pike left at my
direction. This time I couldn't evade in time and suffered a graze on my
chest. That pike must be at least an Epic, to be able to cut through
the Ancient Breastplate of St. Dunstan as if through paper.
"Poison!" I cried as my HP dropped steadily with each second in addition to the damage from the attack.
The god of the wilds attacked again, slicing the air left and right.
Barely avoiding it, I put away my sniper rifle and took out the Sig
Sauer. I emptied the whole magazine of [curse bullets] into Breasal. I
looked in satisfaction as his movements slowed and eventually stopped.
Not only that, he also suffered the 'amplify damage' curse, which
randomly activated with 12% chance upon using curse bullets.
I reloaded the ammunition of the pistol with [poison bullets] before I
unslung my sniper rifle again. I took aim at his heart and fired an [HE
bullet], causing an explosion around his chest. It didn't make much of
an impact, as Breasal seemed to have some kind of barrier around him.
"So... holy bullets?" I asked myself as I took out my holy bullets
clip to replace the HE bullets. Then I pressed the trigger and bingo,
the bullet went past the barrier. It shattered Breasal's chest and
exposed his beating heart to the air.
Unexpectedly, Breasal made a loud roar, which increased his strength
and dispelled all the curses inflicted on him. He came at me with twice the speed he had
before and I just barely managed to avoid it. At that point, all
thoughts of attacking went out the window. I was already too busy
avoiding his attacks to worry about counter-attacking. If I was a
swordsman, this would be a different matter.
A rifle couldn't block a pike, especially a divine pike. If I blocked
it with my rifle, my rifle would break in two. I would rather die than
let it happen. Besides, his [roar] halved all my skills. Even blocking
would be affected. I'd be better off just running.
It took me about 6 minutes of running and evading, but eventually his
enchantment wore off and his speed slowed down to its original level. I
took this chance to mute my headset and drop a contact-sensitive
flashbang to the ground in front of me before jumping over it just as
the flashbang went off. With the flashbang behind me and the sound
muted, the flashbang had minimal effect on me. I hid behind a tree,
took out my sniper rifle and fired another holy bullet, dealing a
headshot in his moment of confusion. Then I activated the 'Ambush'
skill.
I waited for him to walk past my hiding place, remaining silent all
through it. Then once he was far enough, I dealt another headshot from
the back, this time, with the ambush bonus damage applied. I quickly
changed place and reactivated the Ambush skill. I repeated this eight
more times until he wised up and used his power to cast [grass bind]. It
wasn't a particularly powerful magic, as it only bound people and the
binding could be easily broken. The only problem was, he now knew where I
was.
I had no time to cut down the grass. So I fired the sniper rifle and
got myself a chest shot twice more as Breasal charged towards me. I put
away the sniper rifle and threw several grenades in his way, dealing
area effect damage despite his divine protection. Then I took out my
assault rifle, which I had earlier switched into using holy bullets and
fired controlled burst. As he got closer, I panicked and fired full
burst instead.
In the real world, I cried a river for throwing my precious holy bullets down the crapper.
When Breasal got within a few metres from me, I knew I was done for.
With my legs bound by the [grass bind] spell and my assault rifle out of
ammo, there wasn't a lot I could do. So I put away my assault rifle and
grabbed my Sig instead, along with a [holy grenade]. It was my last
holy grenade, made only in Rome. Unless Rome was liberated, this might be
the last holy grenade in the world. Nevertheless, I primed the grenade.
As he approached, I fired my pistol with poison bullets blindly. It
wouldn't matter where it hit, as long as the poison entered his body. It
would be better if it hit his head or heart, but I couldn't be choosy.
My only hope would be to get enough DoT (damage over time) and stall
time long enough for the poison to take effect.
It happened as I managed to put the 7th bullet into his chest, that
his pike hit the shoulder guard of my Ancient Breastplate of St.
Dunstan, and was stopped short of damaging my flesh. Sure, I got myself
another poison damage stacked on top of the previous one, but at least
it wasn't the one hit kill that I was expecting.
Breasal then raised his pike as I took that opportunity to empty the
rest of the pistol's bullets into his open heart. At this distance, even
with crappy pistol skill, even the most inept couldn't possibly miss
that target.
Then as he swung down the blade of his pike, I threw the
holy grenade into his open chest. I activated the active healing,
filling my HP gauge as the holy grenade went off inside the open cavity
of Breasal's chest.
I flew away from the impact of the holy grenade, which also threw
Breasal back a few steps. I refilled my Sig's clip with holy bullets and
with tears in my eyes, fired the last of my holy bullets at his heart
and head. He staggered and he became a lot slower, but he still came
closer, wielding his pike as a walking stick. There was no time to
reload any of my weapons, and he was still faster than my running speed.
So I took out my bowie knife, crossed the single step needed to reach
him, and stabbed the knife into his heart.
I stabbed and stabbed, not even caring about anything else. It was
either him or me. I'd rather that I was the one remaining alive.
Suddenly a dialogue box opened. That was weird, I had killed many
bosses before, but this was the first time that I received a choice of
something. I couldn't tell what the choices were supposed to be, as both
the question and the answers were written in gaelic or celtic. Whatever, it's not like I can tell the difference. So I chose the one
with bonus Purity reward. High Purity was always good.
In Armageddon, high Purity helps NPC interactions because they think you're the good guy.
You have decided to spare Breasal's life. Although Breasal was a pagan
god, God would never ask his people to kill indiscriminately. Your
willingness to grant forgiveness is an example to all who follow the way
of the light. For this act of compassion, you have been granted 10
Purity.
"Are you freaking kidding me? What the hell did I waste my holy
bullets for if I let him go now?!" I shouted at the game. Breasal said
something in Irish again.
For your mercy, Breasal has granted you the power of nature. You can now
enchant any bullets with poison damage on top of its original
enchantments. The effectiveness of this skill improves with practice.
You have acquired [Breasal's Bloodpact].
"Ah, that's better. So even if I use blessed bullets, it can also
have poison enchantment," I said as the usual money rewards flowed in
with the sound of coins being poured into a metal container.
Oh, the beautiful sound of money.
I left Breasal to recover on his own. Along the way to the boat, the
[beast elves], [dire bears] and [unicorns] stayed out of my way, not
even once challenging me. When I arrived at the boat, only Celixia and
two of her party members were waiting. I asked her where the rest were
and what happened to the others. She told me that they were all
slaughtered within a couple of hours. She and her friends were all that
remained. Still, she said her skills improved a lot in the past two
hours. She seemed to think that she would be able to beat up C level
monsters on her own now. We'll see.
So seeing as there was nobody else to wait for, we headed back to
Ireland. As we left the mist, the hidden island of Hy-Brasil faded and
disappeared. When we look back, it was like there was never anything
there.
Back at the pier of Milltown Malbay, we said our goodbyes and parted
ways. I think she had a little crush on me, but unfortunately for her,
I'm straight. I wouldn't date a girl, ever.
She then greeted a group of people who waited at the town's warp
crystal. It seemed like her party members who died during the Hy-Brasil
excursion had already respawned and was waiting for her. Instead of
friends, I was greeted by a monster instead.
In front of me, was The Monster. Yup, that same monster I killed in
Trafalgar Square. That same monster that was so damned hard to kill, it
required hundreds of players to weaken it before I managed to kill it
with critical hits. Was this another event? Why haven't I heard of this?
Or did it come to take revenge? Was there a 'revenge' event or
something?
The Monster was definitely stronger and tougher than Breasal, the
boss that took me an hour and a lot of holy bullets to kill. It was
probably the strongest monster I had fought, probably even stronger than
Asmodeus, which took the combined effort of 80 high level players to
bring down. I stole a glance at the warp crystal behind me. If I started
to run, I could possibly warp away before the monster could reach me.
Last time I only won because a lot of players had already weakened it.
No chance of that in this town filled with noobs.
I took a step back, which was copied by The Monster. I took another
step, which was also copied by The Monster. But The Monster was twice my
size and height. Its single step was bigger than three of my steps.
With sweat pouring down my face in real life, I turned around and ran
full speed towards the town's warp crystal as the townsfolk and low
level players scattered in all directions.
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