Surviving the Game: The Rat Assassin

First Dungeon

Liora woke up the next morning to explore the city more, finding that the herb gathering skill was useful even here as she mapped out the entire area. What surprised her most was when she found an entrance into a tunnel system beneath the city. She decided to explore it alone, the shadows being to her benefit as she had the ability to see even in near total darkness.

She followed the time by her system, the number of plants she was finding down here amazing as there were dozens of different types of mushrooms as well as other plants that grew well in dark, damp places. Her herb skill was advancing quickly as many of them were considered rare by the game, until she stumbled upon something she hadn’t anticipated. Before her was the entrance to 3 different dungeons, the location suggesting she was directly beneath the alley where the Rat Race had been held. Each one was an 11 man Dungeon with a suggested level of 15 for all of them.

Using the system she notified the Class Masters of her find near the Rogue beginning area, each of them finding similar Dungeons near the beginning area of each class as she called for a meeting of the Masters. The Guild Masters still not having been selected yet, as the vote was being held the next week as they continued recruiting and expanding their membership.

20 minutes later they gathered in the same dining hall as Liora hung a map of the city they occupied with each of the Class Masters marking the locations of the Dungeons they had located. Each one of them having 3 level 15 dungeons designed for 11 men.

“How many do we have wanting to join our assault squads?” she asked as they looked at the Map.

“35.” Porcia said evenly as Liora nodded. “In order to be safe, it will take some creative assignments. We have enough Warriors for 2 per team for now, healers however we only have 3 willing to do so. Unless we have Paladins willing to act primarily as healers.” She suggested as Peter smiled.

“As a matter of fact we do, of the 9 Paladins requesting to join, 4 of them are focusing on what we are calling Healadins. Two of the other five are focusing on what we are calling Tankadins with the rest being damage output.” Peter responded as they pulled up the people requesting to be put on assault teams.

The system automatically updated their specialties as it was determined that from the Warriors only half of them were what they considered Tanks. The other 3 were focused on damage, which made the decisions easier as they had one team that only had one tank, but it also had 3 healers to make up for it. By the time they had finished discussing everything though, it was already dinner time and they called a general meeting of the entire Guild in the communal dining hall that could seat all of them.

The attack teams were notified of their assignments, as well as who was in them. Liora was in team 1, and she was excited to be doing this as she found they had jumped to 250 members. Not all of them willing to do these dungeons yet because they weren’t level 15 yet.

“Everyone, we are gathering here tonight for the celebration of what we have discovered. Each of you should have the opportunity to decide if you want to join tonight, as we have found 33 different dungeons spread out amongst the 11 classes. We do not yet know the difficulty level of them, as we just discovered them today. We also selected 3 teams of 11 to begin exploring them, to determine the difficulty level of each. We will issue the reports to the Guild Members, but it will not be automatically distributed to non members. So, tonight we shall have a grand celebration for tomorrow we face the dangers of the game!” she yelled as they did indeed celebrate as the chef wheeled out the prime rib and ale along with all sorts of side dishes to go with it.

The next morning at 7 am she met her assault team at the entrance to the Dungeon they would be doing in the Paladin Area. The system grouped them together as they opened the door, the game flashing as soon as they opened it as the dungeon loaded. It was clear almost immediately it was a separated instance, the program locking them into the story line of this dungeon as all 11 of them prepared to engage whatever came at them.

She immediately hid in the shadows as she advanced down the hallway even ahead of the ranks that were leading with their shields and weapons, the spell casters, priests and melee DPS units behind them. She however had found the first guard, coming up behind him using a shadow step to stab him right in the neck before using a throwing knife to the other guard right in the eye as she began looting the first one. The Tanks were surprised when they found the two bodies, the usable equipment clearly displayed as they decided if they wanted to loot it or not as one of the priests laughed.

“Leave it to the Grand Master to show us how it’s done. Lets pick up the pace a bit, shall we?” he said as another guard dropped as it approached their position making all of them shake their heads as Liora began looting them before disappearing into the shadows again.

They did indeed increase the pace as they kept going through the maze of corridors, their enemies of varied strength and numbers forcing them to work together when they came up on groups of up to a dozen. Their strategy proved to be the most effective though as the Tanks could take just about any damage on their shields, the healers able to instantly heal any damage they sustained as everyone else uses their skills to defeat the rest of the enemies quickly with overwhelming power. Liora got her fair share of the kills as the group watched her drop 4 of them in seconds as she struck brutally leaving her daggers and throwing knives where they were until she plucked them from the corpses as the rest of the team just shook their heads at how good she was at doing that. The experience was divided equally among them all, no matter which one of them for the kill, some of the ones Liora did she got a bonus for being the only one doing damage to them.

As they went the loot was clearly geared towards the Paladin Class, although all of them did find things that were useful for themselves as it also had humanoids of different classes. The only one that didn’t get enhanced gear was Liora, as hers was some of the best for her class at this level. They knew when they got to the boss chamber, as there were 30 of them ready to defend against the attack that would be coming in.

“So, this is interesting. I have a gas bomb that could take a few of them out, as well as some smoke bombs that would allow us to create some confusion.” Liora suggested as the Tank smiled.

“Smoke, oh yeah. Save the gas though, as we have the room for the ranks and melee DPS to join us in a frontal assault through the smoke.” Patrick said as the 2 tanks, a warrior and a paladin all smiled as they hefted their weapons as Liora pulled out a dozen of the smoke bombs and used a torch to light them as they threw them all inside.

As soon as they popped the strike team ran in, Liora using a shadow step to get to the rear and begin using her half dozen throwing knives before she jumped again with a shadow step to get a strike on the Captain, her daggers piercing his armor and stroking both kidneys at the same time as she jumped away pulling them with her as the scream filled the air the rest of the team filling the air with spells and steel as they attacked the front.

Within minutes they had decimated the boss before they began looting everything, Liora finding a nice dagger on the boss that was actually an upgrade from the one she had received from the beginner quests. Once everyone had taken everything they could use and carry, they used guild teleport crystals to return to their Guild Hall. The report showed how easily they had taken it, the other two teams reporting similar results within an hour of their beginning the dungeons.

From the one that her team had finished, they had looted 35 gold and 200 silver for each share. After the guild taxes had automatically been paid from the total first. The Guild was surprised at the windfall for the assault team, as they also allowed anyone who wanted the armor they brought back to have at it. All of the pieces at least uncommon quality and most of them rare. The rest of the guild formed into informal attack teams, all of them deciding on which class they would run, all of the teams bringing back gear and equipment from the dungeons they ran.

By the time it had been settled for the second run, Liora was running with an entirely new group through the Rogue Dungeon. Most of the DPS of this team was Rogue’s, as the same was true for the other classes as well. The Warriors and Paladins taking it in good measure, as the majority of them knew that they wouldn’t be running their own class in any sort of order. The only up side to it was that the equipment loot wasn’t bound to anyone, the guild members getting first dibs before the Profession Masters usually disassembled it for the metals or leather to make other pieces if they weren’t valuable.

Within a week of their find, the stories had begun circulating about their guild being the real deal. As promised, the taxes were used to maintain everyone’s gear as well as food and resource farming opportunities. They had expanded the membership immensely , ending up with 6 full teams of people willing to run the dungeons. Liora however knew that as good as they were they had limited use. By the time she had finished the 5th one, she had reached level 28 and no longer gained experience from the kills. So, instead of wasting her time, she continued exploring the city while working on her profession and class quests, her assassinations having an effect on the leadership of the game of this district as she realized it was one of the ways to become the leader of District One.

With each assassination she gained just a bit more of the reputation she needed in order to place her own people in positions of power so that they would vote for her when she needed them too. By the time she realized it, the first week had easily morphed into the first month. Despite her exploration of the city however, they found no other dungeons in it, the teams beginning to explore the smaller villages and towns inside the kingdom, the Profession Players having learned for them that a lot of them had quests out in the wilds as well. Many of them able to be completed alone with minimal assistance.

It was in fact a mining mission that lead Liora to the first dungeon they found outside of the city, the damn thing rated at level 30 for a 40 man team. She had a feeling with this one that they would need a lot of skill to get past it, especially if it scaled in danger level between level 15 and 30. She had just barely managed level 30, most of the guild at level 25 from running the dungeons all the time as well as their class quests. She smiled as she logged the location on the guild map that she could access, before she went further into the mines to find the raw ore she needed to make the legendary mithril, one bar said to be worth 1,000 gold.

It took another 20 minutes of her killing level 25 creatures that gave amazing experience, even if the loot left something to be desired as she pocketed another 30 silver and disassembled his weapons and gear for base components as what these kobold creatures had was next to useless to her. The main chamber however was another story, as she finally saw why this metal was so sought after. The quest popped up that she had to kill the Kobold King to retrieve his mining pick in order to be able to harvest the raw mithril ore she could see.

So, she used the same gas bombs she had offered to her assault team for their first dungeon, lighting and tossing them as she put on an enchanted mask that would filter the toxic gas out of the air as they began spreading the lethal gas throughout the cavern. Some of the higher level Kobolds were immune to the poison gas, including the King, but their numbers had gone from dozens to a handful as she drew both daggers from their sheaths on her belt and used her shadow step skill plunge them into the back of the King before he even knew what was happening. The Rats Tooth Poison spreading through his veins and dropping him dead at her feet before he could even turn around, his squeal of death alerting the rest that their King had fallen before they took off running so she could loot the corpses.

She learned quickly why you would need this pick in order to mine mithril, because it was made from refined mithril and was probably the only thing strong enough to actually break it up. She smiled as she farmed the ore she needed, her Bladesmithing profession at the level where she was about to be able to start making truly great weaponry. So when she finished mining the veins of ore in the large cavern, she was glad to see she had enough to smelt 50 mithril bars, knowing she would only need one for each pair of daggers she made. She would also be able to make 6 throwing knives or 20 throwing stars from each bar, meaning her weaponry was about to get a massive upgrade as she looted the last corpse and found 6 different blueprints for different pieces of mithril armor and weapons. The armor she knew she could do nothing with as she didn’t have the proper expertise for it, the sword and dagger however she put in her personal inventory and made her way out of the cave and back into the woods she had been exploring and killing the wild game collecting meat and skins to progress those skills as well until the sun began to set before she used her Guild Teleport crystal to return for the daily reports that she knew her people were making at that very moment.