“Nausea in the game is the worst. You either suck it up or your spill your guts on the floor. We don’t poop, why do we vomit? It ignores the pain filters too. You don’t hurt, you just feel wrong until you find yourself doing a technicolor yawn. What the hell? I don’t want to spew a chunky rainbow in the middle of combat. It’s gross.”

  Anonymous complaint filed on the feedback thread in the NEMO forums

  Year 1, Month 1, Day 10, 20:00

  Dusty pushed hard into the first chamber with Allestor and Ovarrix covering her flanks. The room contained 2 ghouls, 2 zombies and 6 skeletons, all level 5. Dusty focused on the ghouls in front of her and stayed loose to dodge as many attacks as she could. Allestor and Ovarrix focused on a zombie each and everyone on the team paid less attention to the skeletons, willing to take a little direct damage in exchange for avoiding the nasty stacking DoT’s. Hyperia enveloped the undead in her ice shards while Torgon drew and fired his bow until his healing skills were called upon.

  Dusty took a nasty raking slash from the ghoul’s claws and immediately felt her stomach cramping in pain. The nausea caused her to lose focus, taking two more slashes and amplifying the debilitating effects. A coolness washed over her as Torgon landed a heal on her, his hand at her back. The spell went to work, restoring her health and making the nausea lessen. Allestor’s wide slashes pulled the attention of the second ghoul from Dusty, giving her a brief respite. She finished the ghoul in front of her and helped Ovarrix kill his zombie. They both pulled the ghoul away from Allestor who was grimacing from the effects of his injuries.

  Torgon kept pumping heals into them, moving with the agility and grace of a dancer, placing his hands wherever he could to land the touch spell. The skeletons went down quickly from accumulated damage and Dusty took a minute to throw up the contents of her stomach. She took a flask of water from her inventory, swirled some in her mouth, spit it out then drank the rest.

  “Those diseases are friggin’ terrible. I can feel my guts clench whenever it lands. The effects magnify with each application and even the healing doesn’t completely rid you of the nausea.” Dusty groaned. “I hate this dungeon already. Why do they have to stink too?”

  Allestor flopped on the ground, letting his own stomach settle. “They are rotting diseased corpses animated by the unholy magic of decay and misery.”

  “I want to fight giant marshmallows, not drippy mcdeath.” Dusty protested.

  “Be careful what you wish for.” Torgon added, his mind on old memories of terrifying giant marshmallows wreaking havoc.

  They grabbed the scattered coins from the defeated foes and moved through the narrow passage into the next chamber. The room was large with broken pillars and smashed tombs. The rubble made the footing treacherous and gave cover to their foes, four large plague hounds, with jowls dripping green ichor.

  Torgon took off around the edge of the room, running in a wide circle, jumping over broken stone and firing arrows at any hound he could see. Hyperia ran the opposite direction, firing force bolts. Dusty moved into the middle, pinning one hound down with a double strike from her sword. Allestor and Ovarrix advanced to help her while the remaining three hounds chased the ranged attackers. The hounds proved to be more bark than bite after they were taken out rather easily.

  “Those are going to suck if they’re mixed in with foes to pin us in place.” Allestor noted. “We’re going to need to find some better armor, enchanted if possible. Our agility from all the stupid crafting you keep making us do helps, but I want to be able to take a hit if I screw up.”

  “Crafting is love, Crafting is life. Beg the loot gods for some enchanted armor blueprints. Failing that, we might try to pick some up at the auction. I’d rather have some nice war weapons, but this is all still the lowest level gear” Torgon thought about the possibilities. “Higher level gear will make worlds of difference but other than my stupidly overpowered cat, none of us are leveling that fast.”

  They pushed forward after their shields recovered. The corridor ahead of them had no floor and the bottom wasn’t visible in the darkness. Narrow pillars of stone stood several feet apart along the length of the hall. The walls were ten feet apart with what looked like narrow hand and footholds space far apart. The entire corridor sprawled more than a hundred feet in length with a scant thirty pillars scattered haphazardly. “Parkour room. Torg, you lead this time. You have the highest agility, find us a path through.”

  Allestor tossed a stone into the corridor, listened carefully and heard a splash echoing back after about ten seconds. “Uh, don’t miss a jump, that’s a long way down.”

  “Thanks” Torgon said drily. “Pass me a couple of lengths of rope. I’ll see if I can set up an easier path.” Torgon took four fifty-foot coils of rope from the party, tying one end around a stone pillar at the start and the other around his waist. He started his careful exploration of the path, jumping from pedestal to pedestal until his rope ran out of slack. He untied it from his waist, tied it to the stone pillar, grabbed another length of rope, tied one end to the pillar and the other end to his waist again. He repeated this process until he had crossed the entire length. The rest of the party followed with a few narrow escapes. Dusty slipped once but caught herself on the rope and hauled her way back up.

  “I think speed running these things is right out.” Dusty leaned against the wall and recovered her breath. “Have we spread the word about this corridor and your method of passing it?”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Yeah, we have the chat sharing information. Apparently, each instance is slightly different with rooms in different orders. The first boss shows up after passing five rooms. The starting chamber counts, so we complete one more room and we’ll get to fight a big mummy,” Ovarrix chimed in.

  A large room filled with twenty skeletons finished, the party sat around, looking into the boss chamber ahead of them. The mummy was big. It stood easily a dozen feet tall. It waited near an altar in the center of the room topped with jars. The rest of the room was clear with niches inside the walls holding more jars. The air around the boss roiled with a sickening miasma. They knew from other groups that it added a disease stack to any player within ten feet of it. The good news was that the miasma had a ten second cooldown before it could infect a player again. The bad news was that slashes from the mummy’s claws would add stacks and the mummy cast spells to immobilize players. The first four teams that tried the mummy wiped without dropping it below 80%. Most teams started to call it there, clearing the first five chambers with increasing efficiency but not bothering with the boss.

  “This would be easy with an AoE cure disease spell, too bad we don’t have one,” muttered Ovarrix.

  “We don’t even have a ranged heal,” laughed Allestor.

  “Torgon and I could alternate pushing in to heal Dusty. Hyperia could keep firing spells at range. You have the heal spell too don’t you Dusty?” Ovarrix asked.

  Dusty answered, “I do. I could use it to clear stacks after I get immobilized. Do you think there’s a way to interrupt the casting?”

  “Nobody has found one yet.” Hyperia added.

  Allestor broke in, “I have an idea. What if the spellcasting from the mummy requires line of sight? I have that fog bank spell. I could use that and see if it obscures the vision. If it doesn’t work, we see how well we can do and probably wipe. If it does work, we should have the damage and healing to pull it off.”

  “Can you cancel the fog bank after you cast it?” Ovarrix asked.

  “No, but that mummy is big. We can run around and just pepper it with ranged attacks and keep adding fog banks when it casts. Assuming it doesn’t chain cast and make me fill the whole fricking room, and you know, if it works.” Allestor gestured animatedly. “Worst case, we get some xp debt, lose some random gear and have to rethink our entire plan for clearing this dungeon.”

  “When you put it that way, I’m in.” Hyperia snickered.

  The group stood up and prepared for the fight. Ovarrix spoke again, “If the fog bank lands on top of you, break right every time. Dusty, try to self-heal to clear disease stacks, I’ll handle the extra heals until I need help. Torg, you focus on damage this time. Let’s bag another first kill on a boss!”

  Dusty sprinted into the room, immediately attacking the mummy with a double strike. The others spread wide and fired off arrows and spells at the boss. Dusty ducked under a swipe and fired off a heal to cleanse the disease stack from the mummy’s aura. Magic began to coalesce around the mummy’s claws and Allestor threw a fog bank about six feet off the ground, covering the mummy’s head. A dry and hoarse roar could be heard and the magic dissipated.

  Allestor yelled, “It works! Hell Yeah!” The mummy burst out of the fog bank and moved to attack Allestor as he laughed and sprinted away. Dusty trailed behind the boss landing slash after slash against its ragged wrappings. Torgon kept a steady rain of arrows up as the mummy turned back to Dusty and began to cast another spell. Allestor dropped another fog bank on the head of the boss, spoiling the spell again.

  The health on the boss dropped steadily, 80%, then 70%, then dropping below 60%. The rhythm of the fight came easy. Dusty would heal herself whenever a disease stack landed and the ranged damage came in steadily, not pulling enough aggro to make the boss change targets but dropping the health over time. Allestor interrupted any spellcasting attempts with his fog bank and nimbly stayed out of the reach of the boss while Dusty used her double strikes to focus the mummy back on her.

  When the boss’s health fell to 50%, things changed dramatically. His miasma field spread to encompass the entire room, adding the disease to everyone. He stopped taking damage from attacks and a thick black swarm of scarab beetles began to spread from the altar. Hyperia fired ice shards at the beetles but failed to damage them.

  “It’s a party wipe mechanic, either our damage is too low, and we triggered an enrage or there’s something we’re missing.” Ovarrix shared.

  Dusty suddenly ran to a wall and smashed the jars inside the niche. The boss’s health dropped by a full 5%. “The jars! They’re canopic jars! They have the internal organs from the mummy inside them. Break them all! Hurry!”

  The team turned their attacks on the jars across the room, smashing them all. When they were finished, the scarab beetles turned to dust and the boss began attacking normally with 20% health remaining. Frantic heals were cast to clear off all the disease stacks and their normal combat rotations returned. The boss soon collapsed into a pile of dust and bandages on the floor.

  “Congratulations! You have defeated the Guardian Mummy of the Lost Empire! This is the first time this boss has been defeated so rewards are doubled!”

  The boss lay there with the bag symbol for loot floating above it for a solid three minutes while the party let their stomachs settle. Torgon finally moved to the boss and took the loot. “Good news. It dropped a recipe for a potion of disease resistance. The requirements to make it are low and it will give you an 80% chance to resist disease stacks for an hour. It also dropped a full five skillbooks plus an enchanted bow. We scored big time. Here’s a sweeping slash for you Ovarrix, a double strike for you Allestor, Fire Bolt for Hyperia and a double shot for me. Dusty, you get Mocking Blow, a taunt skill. I’m keeping the enchanted long bow of agility.”

  “We need to pull out of the dungeon and pass the recipe off to Stabitha to get it into production. I’ll message Mark to take his team out as well so he can build us more of the portable ballistae overnight with the buff.”

  “We’re not crafting tonight?” Hyperia asked.

  “No,” Torgon responded, “We’re going to patrol the outer defensive line with the rest of Mark’s team. I think we’re going to spend the night dealing with the vanguard of the monster army. I’m asking the other guild leaders to bolster the patrols with ranged troops tonight. We’re passing out all the heavy crossbows and long bows we can spare.”

  “The counter on the dungeon is at 9,236/10,000 now. We’ve bought ourselves more than a day of breathing space already. The potions are going to make it much easier for people to progress, plus we can share our method for defeating the first boss. We’ll keep a few teams down there to push the counter lower and see how much progress they can make.”

  Hyperia huffed, blowing a bit of her hair from her face. “Another sleepless night filled with boredom and violence. We should take a break and rest in the morning in case we don’t have the opportunity in the near future.”

  Ovarrix nodded, “Agreed. Off to the base then we’ll stalk the walls. With luck, it will be a quiet night.”

  Everyone else groaned and Allestor spoke up, “Now you’ve done it.”