End Online: Volume 2 Page 2

  ‘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.

  Lost

  Lvl: 24

  Health: 179/318

  Stamina: 111/169

  Verde

  Lvl: 72

  Health: 811/894

  Stamina: 176/230

  Sir Laurence

  Lvl: 43

  Health: 543/796

  Mana: 127/206

  Stamina: 143/143

  Companions:

  Fen

  Lvl: 35

  Health: 613/730

  Magic: 261/310

  Stamina: 362/362

  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 encou
nters, 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.

  The air started to warm up as we got deeper into the dungeon, it also began to get a little stale from the lack of circulation. We had terrible directions inside the dungeon, running into countless dead ends, sometimes more than once.

  We were lucky that there were only goblins in this dungeon, it allowed us to get used to the goblins way of fighting and minimize the damage we took after each encounter. Sometimes I managed to deal with three or four goblins without getting a single scratch on my.

  An hour in and we encounter a set of crude ramp down, cut into the walls of what appears to be a bottomless hole. I pick up a decent sized rock off the ground and drop it down, about twenty seconds passes until the sound of it hitting the bottom resounds back up. Definite death only awaits those who fall in.

  During the first floor I had levelled all the way up to 30 thanks to being a main damage dealer. Fen stealing one hundred percent of the experience from her kills had levelled up to 41, and the other two players had gained a level or two each.

  I regained one of the points in agility I lost from my previous death but I gained a total of four points in dexterity! All thanks to fighting a usual group of three to five goblins by my own. Seriously that Prince Charming could have lent me a hand at least. He was a complete meat shield for Verde.

  We follow the spiral ramp down to the second floor, the silence of the tunnel giving me goosebumps all over my body. There are also less pole torches sticking out of the ground down here, making the area darker than the first floor.

  We come across a fork in the path. Verde, winning the rock, paper, scissors, decides to take the route on the right. Out of the shadows down the path a large group of about ten goblins comes at us.

  “What are they?” Verde asks about the two goblins in the group that don’t seem to fit in, slightly worried.

  There was definitely something a little off about them. They were much bulkier than the others, and that had nothing to do with the fact that they were wearing rusty iron armour.

  “What is it with goblins and rusty iron??” I ask rhetorically.

  I could not sell rusty iron weapons for more than a few coppers and no doubt armour was the same. Using analyse on one of them, I was fortunate I had levelled up the ‘Creature Analysis’ skill enough to barely be able to reveal their information.

  Name: Goblin Warrior

  Level: 50

  Health: 715

  Magic: 0

  Stamina: 110

  ??

  “Not good,” I warn the others, “Be wary of those with armour, they’re call goblin warriors. They are much stronger and have stamina points so they may be able to use some sacred arts. I won’t get any more information on them till I start defeating them.”

  Prince Charming for once didn’t charge forward for once, fully aware of how dangerous the current situation is he stuck to Verde like glue. I felt a little vomit rising in my throat at how clear his intentions were.

  ‘Protect the lady, impress the lady, and get the lady.’ It was a scenario straight out of a fantasy tale, so cliché that I wonder if it may actually work. I have gather from our time partied together that Verde has no interest in Sir Laurence in that way but he is relentless in his pursuit.

  Fen and I sprint forward to take the initiative against the incoming goblins, ice bolts fly past me, never missing a target. I launch a mix of throwing knives amongst the deadly ice attacks that appear to have gotten stronger with Fen’s level increasing.

  We take down one of the minor goblins but the two goblin warriors don’t take much damage at all. One of Fen’s ice bolts removed about twenty percent health but my throwing knives were too poor quality, one dealing a little damage for hitting a critical area, the other completely breaking on a piece of torso armour.

  Fen unleashes one more volley of ice bolts as we begin our attack, taking down two more as I rush through with my blades, landing critical hits on necks before the goblins could react. I cut a path straight through to one of the goblin warriors, using my new blade to slash its neck, spinning around and dropping on one knee to let deal another strike across the back of its knees.

  I have learnt a lot since beginning this game, including about precision attacks. Slashing the back of someone’s knees was one of these precision attacks, slowing down leg movement for a decent period of time.

  The goblin warrior still had over half its health after my initial critical attack however and shrugged off my precision attack as if it was nothing. I had no time to escape as it turned and activated a sacred art, indicated by its sword adopting a red aura.

  I roll back and manage to get away with minimal damage from the goblin warriors sacred art, leaving four lines of light tracing the path that the blade took. I took two glancing blows to my shoulder and back in my escape but getting hit by that directly would no doubt spell death for someone with a low armour rating like me, I already lost thirty percent of my health just from the two glancing blows after all.

  My hand rests on a broken piece of dagger from earlier. I need to think quick in this scenario so picking up the broken blade a little bigger than two fingers I flick it at the goblin warrior’s face, using the moment it moved its weapon to block it to get back on my feet and slip past its defence, landing a flurry of blows anywhere I could land them.

  Striking the armour was exactly the same as striking skin in this game, the resistance was exactly the same as armour ratings are applied all over the body.

  I had to keep an eye on my surrounding area as my ‘Aggravation’ skill was passive and always active. Occasionally A goblin would break off from the rest to attack me, but Fen always stopped them with an ice bolt to the back. ‘What a wonderful companion, I knew it was right to have her with me’

  The goblin warrior goes to make a slash at me. My legs are feeling weary from all the damage I have taken up to this point but the goblin warrior is in worse condition than me, now only swinging its arms wildly.

  Utilizing my speed I work my footwork and while ducking under the blade, circle it opposite its momentum to get behind it and launch two powerful strikes to its back. It collapses to its knees before falling forward, dead.

  Fen is nearly finished with the rest of the goblins, her goblin warrior already dead and the rest not far from death. But where is Verde and Prince Charming?

  Glancing down the corridor at where we originally were I spot them, engaged in combat against a troupe of goblins the same as the ones Fen and I are nearly finished with.

  There are nine goblins surrounding them, two of which are goblin warriors. They both look exhausted and I scold myself for failing to notice their health dropping in the party window, they barely have thirty percent health left each.

  I quickly open my inventory, stuff a few green medicinal herbs in my mouth and also grab a fresh batch of throwing knives.

  “Hurry, Fen!” I shout to the wolf that finishes the last goblin, “We need to go save those two now! They’re in trouble so no holding back!”

  She doesn’t exactly rush to come to their rescue but she does at least listen to me, unenthusiastically sending of ice bolts one after another down the corridor, a few nearly hitting Verde and Prince Charming.

  ‘Fen, those icicles never come that close to me when we’re fighting together, are you doing that deliberately?’

  I start throwing the knives at the goblins, once I am nearly upon them I draw my swords and cutting through a nea
rly dead goblin I combat one of the goblin warriors, leaving ‘Aggravation’ to draw the attention of other goblins away from my two party members near death.

  The goblin warrior’s sword glows red just like the last one, but I have better footing than against the last one, allowing me to easily retreat back to safety. my companions health drops down to fifteen percent each and they are so worn out they can no longer defend themselves properly.

  “Perceptual Sight!”

  Time slows down for me, to about sixty percent of normal. I race forward at the goblin warrior, crossing my blade in front of me as I close the distance between us. Using my heightened reaction speed I swing my weapons outwards, cutting a ‘V’ along the goblin warrior’s neck. Immediately I bring the weapons back down, doing a precision attack by slashing the inside of its elbow joints.

  The goblin warrior screams out in pain, but I am already behind it, crouching to deliver another precision strike behind its knees follows by activating the sacred art ‘Triple Thrust’ on its back.

  I still have plenty of time left in ‘Perceptual Sight’. I use it to dash through the mob of goblins dealing deadly slashes and stabs to critical points. One critical strike to any goblin affected by my ‘Aggravation’ is enough to sufficiently weaken it to no longer be a threat.

  Any goblin still attacking the Verde and Prince Charming received two attacks to quickly finish it off. In mere moments all the goblins were finished bar one and my two comrades had less than ten percent health left.

  “No! Fen, attack that goblin!” There is one more goblin, to be precise the second goblin warrior, not under the effects of my ‘Aggravation’ and about to attack Verde. My only hope was for Fen to launch an ice attack and knock the goblin back, but where was this attack?

  I look at Fen and she gives me a look as if saying, ‘Too bad.’

  When I see her current status in the party information she is completely out of mana. ‘What the hell? I could have sworn she had mana just a moment ago, where did it all go?’