I’ll need to buy a game pod, I thought on the way home. My headset was still, all things considered, a piece of shit. There was a reason why I moved to The Cave instead of trying to couch hop at Eve’s, for example. Game pods were just that much smoother to play with.
When we arrived at home, however, a delivery van was already there, and my dad was helping carry a large box to our front doors.
“Hello, and surprise,” he said, slapping the top of the box with a grin on his face.
It turned out, my dad had already gone and bought a game pod for me as a gift. It was a new model with all the RGB nonsense and sharp angles, marketed to gamers, to make it more expensive than the actual specifications would have suggested—though luckily it had all the features I wanted. Low rendering latency, and strong visualization speed and clarity to make Shadow Dash easier to cast.
Could have still asked which model I wanted, though… I thought with a sigh.
Still, I thanked my dad. He wanted the best for me, even if I still felt annoyed at him. If I continued giving him a cold shoulder, I’d be the petty one soon.
I would have just liked an actual apology. Or was I just being childish?
We carried the game pod to the attic. I did my workout, having improved my push-ups number to 16. Then I logged in, and my nocturnal lifestyle continued.
***
In-game, the next three weeks were what I’d call a spree of hard work.
Veyra and I focused a hundred percent of our attention into improving our builds, coming up with strategies, leveling up, and trying to snipe deals from the auction house.
With the Portal Mage’s Crypt occupied by the top guilds now, we had to pick a new undiscovered one to hunt. Most of the high-level dungeons had already been discovered by now, but a few more secretive locations were still free for us to hunt. I laid out all the options and made a few suggestions, but I let Veyra decide which dungeon would be the most profitable, since she was the expert when it came to clearing overtuned dungeons.
She insisted on bringing us to the Blighted Mountain City Of Vyrmire.
As the name implied, Vyrmire wasn’t really a dungeon. Rather, it was a full goddamned poisonous blighttown, filled with Cursed Walkers and other Fallen Dragonborn. The curse that had turned Amolinn’s mushroom town into a mist-shrouded dreadful town was even more potent here, though the townsfolk weren’t NPCs anymore; they’d fallen to straight-up monsters.
The entrance was at the bottom of a ravine, extending upward. Rope bridges and platforms connected wooden buildings, the foundations of which were flimsy at best.
The monsters ranged from, Fallen Dragonborn Soldiers, Fallen Dragonborn Archers, Cursed Blowdart Walkers, Blight Hounds, to half a dozen other pieces of shit that we had to learn the attack patterns to. The average monster level was only 330, but monsters were much more abundant here, often in clusters.
To make things worse, Veyra’s portal glitch to separate monsters was finally patched and fixed out of the game. If we met a cluster of monsters, we had to find a way around, or we had to fight anyway.
Nonetheless, Veyra insisted that this dungeon was where we wanted to be. With the way she grinned at me, I just couldn’t say no. So despite my dislike for anything poisonous or cursed, the blighttown it was.
Our progress was slow for the first few days with a few deaths here and there, but just like in the Portal Mage’s Crypt, Veyra quickly figured out how to cheese or stunlock monsters. She froze the blowdarts onto the goblin-like dragonborns’ faces, or placed [Elemental Barriers] in uncomfortable locations to stop the archers from shooting their bows, all the while I dueled swordsmen or spearmen with the help of The Immortal.
[Eviscerate] worked just fine against the monsters. In some ways, it was actually better. I needed around twenty-five stacks of evisceration to kill a level 330 critter. At those stacks, the skill amplified critical strikes by 6250%, damage doubled by [Blood Desperation]. If I needed to, I could keep stacking that further.
Landing twenty-five attacks wasn’t easy though. If I got hit once, I had five seconds to drink an antidote, or I'd die. If I took too long in between attacks—ten seconds precisely—the previous stacks of evisceration would start closing, one each second.
But I was convinced that [Eviscerate] was the way to go. It wasn’t as overpowered as the old [Vital Strike], but I could see myself winning duels with it.
Overall, the dungeon hunt dropped us a lot of random loot, most of which gave us decent money, but nothing that slotted into our builds.
Instead, what helped form a build much more was the auction house.
I kept checking new listings every few hours for anything at all that could possibly slot into my build without breaking the bank. I looked mostly at epic uniques, and I was down to invest into a legendary, but only if the effects were absolutely fantastic for my build.
I ended up buying a charm to replace the monster avoidance charm that Veyra hated, and I focused on searching for items to fix my low health problem.
In the end, after the full three weeks of dungeon hunting, leveling up, and auction sniping, this was my character card:
Character Name: Assassin
Guild: Solo Mage (Recruit)
Character Level: 247
Progress To Levelup: 2,240,235/9,302,134 Experience
Class: Assassin
Stats:
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Health: 13,005/13,005
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Mana: 6000/6000
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Attack Force: 6753,33
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Critical Strike Chance: 15%
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Spell Power: 70
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Defence: 333,33
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Total Resistances Combined: 1166.65
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Monster Avoidance: 30%
Class Skills (Active):
Thrust, Swing, Throw, Dodge, Stealth (Level 10), Conceal Footsteps, Shadow Dash, Afterimage, Eavesdrop, Eviscerate (Level 29)
Class Skills (Passive):
Lightweight Weapon Proficiency (Level 35), Dagger Proficiency (Level 42), Vital Strike (Level 9 (+4 from items))
Footwear: Boots Of The Unseen Veil (Legendary, Unique Event Item)
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+200 Defence
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+150 Attack Force
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Unseen Veil (Passive): The cooldown of dash abilities is 15% lower.
Critical Veil (Passive): After exiting a dashing ability, the next melee attack will deal 20% more damage.
Ring Slot One: Enna’s Protection (Epic)
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+4000 Maximum Health
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+50% Passive Health Recovery
Enna’s Protection (Passive): Healing effects are 20% more potent on you.
The effects on that one weren’t very good, and the passive health recovery didn’t do much, considering my health recovery was so slow regardless, but the pure health stat was more than just solid, so I bought that for a thousand gold.
Ring Slot Two: Lost Ring Of Edda (Epic, Unique Event Item)
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+5000 Maximum Mana
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+100 Attack Force
Cry Of The Abandoned Phoenix (Active, Conditional): Lost Ring Of Edda contains the dying breaths of a young heartbroken phoenix. Critical Strikes have a small chance to take effect twice. The second critical strike does 50% reduced fire damage.
Accessory: Mithril Star Pin (Epic)
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+200 All Elemental Resistances
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+1000 Maximum Health
That was another stat stick item to let me hopefully tank more than one hit. The health stat wasn’t all that good, but the elemental resistances were pretty much necessary if I didn’t want to get blasted by the first fireball that grazed my skin. This one cost 1500 gold.
Gloves: Grip Of The Black Night (Legendary)
Stats:
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+540 Attack Force
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+100% Critical Strike Damage
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+3 Dagger Proficiency
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+4 to Vital Strike
Black Night (Passive): Attacks deal 30% more damage in the dark.
Weapon Slot One: Cursed Lichfang (Legendary, Unique Event Item)
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+3000 Attack Force
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+50% Critical Strike Damage
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+15% Critical Strike Chance
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+5 Dagger Proficiency
Curse Of The Lich (Passive): Attacks with Cursed Lichfang deal 50% less damage to all targets. The reduced damage is stored inside the dagger. 0/60,000 damage stored.
Curse Of The Lich (Active): Release all damage stored with a powerful blast of dark magic.
Weapon Slot Two: The Immortal (Epic, Unique)
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+330 Attack Force
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+100 Defence
Immortal Block (Passive): Perfect Blocks with The Immortal are 500% more effective.
Immortal Parry (Active, Conditional): Perfect Blocks have a small chance of staggering the enemy’s posture.
Headwear: Runebrand (Epic)
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+333.33 Attack Force
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+33.33% Critical Strike Damage
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+33.33 Defence
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+33.33 All Elemental Resistances
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+333.33 Maximum Health
Rune Combination (Active, Conditional): Landing four consecutive attacks within the span of five seconds activates runes, boosting Runebrand’s stats by 200% for five seconds. While Rune Combination is active, land four more consecutive attacks within five seconds to activate Rune Dreamwork.
Rune Dreamwork (Active, Conditional): Boost’s Runebrand’s stats by 500% for ten seconds.
That one had a great synergy with my playstyle. When stacking [Eviscerate], I landed four repeated attacks decently often, especially against tanks. If I got [Rune Dreamwork] active, all of those numbers would start with a two and end in a lot of zeroes. It was a decent stat stick item if I managed to start a fight well.
The problem was that I now had a literal magical rune branded onto my forehead, like a showy tattoo, but Veyra said she liked it, so that was fine by me.
Armor: Cloak Of Oblique Transcendence (Epic, Unique)
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500 Attack Force
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30% Monster Avoidance
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70 Spell Power
Blood Desperation (Active, Conditional): Straight attacks are 100% more effective. Active Condition: Fall Below 40% health. Status: Inactive.
Hood (Passive, Conditional): All stats increased if the hood is up. This occupies the headpiece slot. Status: Inactive—Active Cosmetically.
And that was it. My current set. Far from perfect with some suboptimal placeholder items, but it was the best we could conjure with the current budget.
We gathered in the tavern after nine hours of dungeon hunting, where Veyra leaned against the wall, staring at my character card.
“I don’t know…” she said. “It’s decent, I guess. Better than having Charm Of Shadowfang.”
“Yeah. Decent…”
I didn’t have much else to add.
“It’s decent,” Veyra repeated. “But is it good enough to be competitive in Worlds? I still don’t think so. We’ll be facing off against top one hundred players. A lot of them will have mythic items. It’ll be monsters like Henrift every round, no matter which event we choose to compete in.”
“At least my health and defence stats are enough to tank one or two hits,” I said.
“Your health is just barely fit for the late-game, and your defence will barely make a difference,” Veyra corrected. “Three hundred defence will give you around twenty percent physical damage reduction, which won’t help, considering everyone will have at least five thousand attack force. That’s a low estimate. You’ll still take over four thousand damage from any attack at all. Your elemental resistances might be just enough to not get one-shotted by a mid-tier fireball.”
“Yep, that sounds good,” I said. “I still don’t intend to get hit. I’m fighting with The Immortal. I only need to get my health up so that undodgeable AoE doesn’t burn me alive. How long would you say I could survive against Henrift’s ultimate with this build?”
“Maybe ten seconds against the passive burn,” Veyra said. “And you’ll still get one-shot if he activates the pulse, which he didn’t do once during the competition.”
“Ten seconds is perfect, and that pulse would have been dodgeable with Shadow Dash,” I said. “I should have more than enough health with this. I’m just concerned about one thing…”
I grabbed Cursed Lichfang from my inventory. This item had so far been my most prized possession. It was a pretty dagger, and I really loved it, but…
“I think I need to replace Lichfang,” I said.
“What?” Veyra asked. “Really? You think so?”
“The nerfs made it useless in my opinion,” I said. “The passive will fill up quicker, sure, and it’ll deal sixty thousand damage, but if that can’t crit, it’s just not going to be useful.”
Veyra crossed her arms, thinking. “I was thinking that sixty thousand damage worth of dark magic would still be enough to deal with most players, but that might still be difficult to stack…”
“I’ll keep Lichfang if I can’t find anything better,” I said. “But this item doesn’t match well with Eviscerate at all. If I find something on the auction, I’ll buy it right away.”
“Can you afford another legendary dagger, though?” Veyra asked.
“If I sell Lichfang, sure,” I said. “Or I’ll replace it with an epic if there’s one with a better synergy.”
“I don’t know if I should trust you to be responsible after the quest charm incident,” she said with a sigh.
“I know my build,” I said with an amused smile. “Let’s continue tomorrow. At this pace, we should finish the blighttown in a day or two.”
“Yep, another decent day today,” she said, and my smile spread to her. “And also, we’ll need to start thinking about which event we’ll compete in Worlds. The list seemed a bit awkward for our skillsets.”
“Right,” I said, recalling our options.
The best would have, of course, been two versus two PvP. Sadly, that hadn’t been an event in years. The two most popular events had always been one versus one duels, and full guild PvP battles. If we went with duels, we’d have to fight each other, and we didn’t have members with tickets for a full guild battle.
There were, however, eight more side events. Out of those, three versus three was the most popular side-event. Even then, we didn’t have a third member. Technically, we could join that one, but we’d need to fight at a disadvantage. The other events were mostly quirky events like “King Of The Hill” or dungeon speedrunning events, and of course the pet race—the favorite of all the fan girls.
We still had time to decide, though, so for now, we gave each other good night hugs and headed to sleep.
I continued scrolling the auction in bed, passing hundreds of bad deals, useless items, and straight-up scams. Good deals usually passed fast, especially now that Worlds was about to happen. Everyone wanted to maximize their builds last second. Items went fast.
What do I even need to defeat Annath? I thought, recalling the fight with her. I imagined how the same fight would go if I fought her with my current build.
Probably still a loss. My current build was really good if I managed to land four consecutive attacks really quickly to activate Runebrand and stack evisceration. But at the same time, how hard would it be to land four attacks against Annath in the span of five seconds? Probably impossible.
I didn’t even know if we’d meet Annath in Worlds at all. She’d be present at the event, of course, but chances were, she’d only compete in the two main events, which we would probably miss.
Regardless, using her as a benchmark for the strength of our opponents was a good idea. If I could beat her, I could beat just about anyone. So the question was, what kind of item would I need to beat her?
I kept thinking, coming up with ideas, when suddenly, an item popped up on the auction.
No, not an item. The item. It was a unique legendary that looked like a fresh drop sold by the rank 1 player himself, Dragrath.
The dagger’s base-stats were terrible, but the passive ability just seemed overpowered. I double checked I’d read it right. This dagger, with the correct optimization, could quite possibly revive my build.
Its instant buy price was thirty thousand gold.
I only had twenty-seven thousand right now.
I gritted my teeth, quickly logged back in, and placed Lichfang into auction, selling it for six thousand gold. Any less, and I’d die inside. Any more, and it would take too long. I watched both my listing and Dragrath’s listing. If his item sold before mine, I was ready to take my offer back. I wouldn’t want to sell Lichfang for nothing.
Luckily, Lichfang sold first to an anonymous buyer. I had enough gold to buy the item.
I hesitated. Did I really want to pay thirty thousand gold, over twenty thousand dollars, for an in-game item?
Yes I did. What else would I spend the money on?
A car? No, fuck that. I confirmed the purchase, spending almost all of my share from the money earned with Veyra to buy an in-game dagger.
Then I logged off and went to sleep, cackling quietly at my pillow like a maniac.