RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 154

His team was a strong one with over half the members having a unique weapon. It was an easy task for them to kill through the group of orcs. In any other game, this would have been a great thing, but Balthazar didn’t feel so as this meant that they would get minimal loot from them.

As expected, they only found a couple of level 13 black iron equips which none of them wanted. They had already outfitted themselves with the best equipment that they could get from Rudra for the first clear. Rudra had been quite accommodating because they were in an alliance and his boss would get the equipment. He had already been considering Blazing Fury as an offshoot of the guild.

“These are a waste,” said Balthazar looking at the equips. There were no resources either. Even when they tried to forage the orc tusks, the system realized them to be broken or charred. “Best kill them by attacking a single point like their legs, just like we killed those deer,” said Shadow as he put the equips in his bag in disappointment. “Avoid attacks on their face if possible. We can forage their tusks.”

Though it required more effort, the team decided to try it out as the loot disappointed even them. Shadow decided to go ahead in stealth as usual and the others followed the instructions that he sent to team chat.

The mountain had a number of small entrances like caves built into its face. Most of these were just the peasant’s homes which foraged the surrounding terrain for food and a few of them would be posts for dwarven sentries. Currently all these would be devoid of any dwarves and few of them would have orcs feasting upon the bodies of the dead dwarves.

It had the appearance of ruins and smoke coming out of a bunch of those huts. The players could be sure that these ones would definitely have orcs but there would be orcs jumping out from other entrances too. Apart from these, there would be a large grand entrance which led into the depths of the keep halfway up the mountain. It would be visible from the base itself. This was the main entrance into the keep.

Most players immediately took this path by now. If they moved around on the mountain, they would face ambushes by the orcs, and this would slowly cause them to waste their consumables. But Balthazar had other priorities. He had almost reached level 15 but his mask was still at level 5. He would soon have negligible effects of its skills if he continued in this manner.

He needed to kill as many of the orcs as possible to collect their life essences. Apart from him, the other players like Merlin, Sultan and others with a unique armament also had this issue. They all needed life essences of dark faction monsters or some other alternate, the way he could use void race or draconic species’ life essences. He also told that similar to the bandit camp, these caves might have loot. So, it was easy to convince them. Apart from that, the iron-clad rule of the dungeons in the game was to clear the surrounding monsters to make the boss fight easier.

The enhanced stealth provided by the Mask of Shadow’s had already weakened and his stealth wasn’t any stronger than other players now. He had to be much more careful.

He began to get caught by the orcs as soon as he executed the pick pocket when he attempted to steal from groups of orcs. He had to immediately continue to attack. It had become increasing hard for him as he had been previously reliant on the strong effect of the enhanced stealth.

“Dude, you better stop trying to steal and use cheap shot as soon as possible. Else, we would waste more mana and potions,” said Merlin who had already noticed that Shadow’s stealth wasn’t the same as before.

Shadow also nodded his head in agreement. He realized that it was best that he use this opportunity to upgrade his Mask first, before he continues with his usual plundering style. They slowly went from one small cave to other and in an hour managed to cover over a hundred such caves and still killed less than a hundred of the orcs. Shadow himself managed to land the last blow on only 40 of them. He still needed four times the amount to upgrade his mask.

“I can’t rely on my equipment and need to completely fix to the strategy that was created by those guilds,” thought Balthazar. The others were also tired of searching the small caves. Though they found some equipment. The best they found was Bronze grade equipment, which they were already losing interest in. So, they all agreed to try out the main entrance.

Bangar’s keep was like a tower. It had three floors going down and each of the floors had a stairs which led to the next floor and was guarded by a boss monster. None of the small caves on the outside of the mountain would lead to these floors.

The major delay with these floors was not the monsters or the bosses, but the path to bosses. It was a labyrinth of caves that would be hard to remember. There would also be a couple of side bosses that could be killed and a bunch of dwarves that could be rescued in the fort.

It was once considered that the fastest way to get to the boss could be found by saving a dwarf and moving according to his directions. Most guilds found out the pathways by use of this technique in his past life. Though Balthazar knew the right way, he decided to use the same trick. The good thing was he also knew where he could find a few dwarf allies in the first floor.

The first floor was just a long snaky tunnel about ten feet tall with paths diverging to its left and right. The diverging tunnels also had the same design making it extremely hard for them to recognize one from the other.

Unlike the caves of the goblins and trolls, these caves looked like they are the passages of a castle. It had brackets on both sides of the walls, with gems socketed into them that provided lighting. There were also directions written at every joint, but in dwarven language. Without understanding one could hardly use them, but Shadow took pictures of them so that he could tell his guild to follow a sequence of pictures to reach various treasure chests and then the mini-boss. It was a good way to mark the path that they took in this maze.

The problem with this dungeon was that there were less monsters but more traps in this floor. One would fight monsters (except for bosses) got only about ten percent of the whole journey. That too, it was when someone knew the actual path.

Less monster implied less loot in most cases, but to compensate for it, there would also be six bronze chests in the floor. If they managed to open it before others, it was bound to provide silver grade armaments. The traps were mostly arrows and flame balls that were triggered by stepping on particular. The traps in this place had no signs and one couldn’t avoid triggering them except if they already triggered it before remembered its location and avoided it. Even if he accidentally triggered any trap, Balthazar could easily avoid them or block the arrow with his dagger if he was alone.

With a team, he had to employ the tanks to shield the others. The players could always block arrows with their weapons, but any flame balls would still cause more damage without shield and only could be evaded. That is not an issue for an individual, but even if one evades these traps, there is a good chance that the person beside him would be the victim of it as the evading person would block his line of sight.

So, blocking the traps was very essential. There were already three tanks with shields in the team. A shield was also provided to Tetsujin allowing them to cover the other five from attacks on either side. This was one of the simple ways used to counter the situation in his past life. It allowed the players to protect the weaker members of the team, but it put a good amount of effort on the healers and tanks. The tanks would be forced to take all the damage in this situation and if they kept moving through the wrong way, they would continue to bear attacks till they even lose their life.

But it was still the best option to use this method as the alternatives were not any better. Shadow went ahead of them with the excuse that he needed to explore. He decided to take them to mini boss of the first floor. This one was a troll who guarded a few dwarves who were held in cages. These dwarves could help them with the path to the other bosses.

Once, he was done with the dungeon, he could just give the path to the troll and the others could easily complete the dungeon with the help of the dwarves they rescued. He knew that there was also a good chance for first kill of the mini-boss as he didn’t hear of anyone crossing the first floor yet. If the mini boss was dead, it would be a simple thing to cross even the second floor much less the first.

But before the mini boss, he had to take them to treasure chests too. There were six in this floor of the fortress with three being guarded by orcs and the other three just at the ends of a few passages. He first led them to the chests as he hoped that they could equip themselves better before reaching the mini boss.

The traps would be considered too many in number for the ones who aren’t used to it. Such a number of traps would frighten most players as it required a lot of resources to move through the place. If they went for the treasure chests, it would increase their consumption of potions, but Balthazar knew that bronze equipment too are worth more than the amount of potions that would be used for it. So, he took the decision and led them to the treasure chests first.

As he knew the way, their progress was quite fast and within forty minutes they managed to get through five of the treasure chests on the floor. A couple of them were guarded by orcs, but they had no issue in killing them. They managed to get 16 armaments with four of them being silver grade. It was a good upgrade better than any he had at this floor in his previous life. Bitter Beast, Tetsujin, Tang and Sultan got to use the silver equipment. Most of the equips found in the dungeon were for physical attack occupations.

He left the last one as it was along the way to the next floor and soon led them to the mini-boss. They ended up in a large room with shiny black walls and a lot of empty cages adorning the walls. There were a number of chains hanging around the place and even a set of bloody torture tools that looked like they have just been used. A number of chains and broken-down cages could also be seen on the ground.

A large furnace was at one corner of the room with a few pieces of meat hanging over it from a metal rod. There was a brownish yellow colored large troll sleeping at the back of the room as it hugged a huge club with a couple of dwarves lying down in a cage by its side. On the other side, there were a heap of skeletons which looked like the meat had just been picked of the bones. A bunch of broken down weapons were right beside these bones. Most of the team felt like puking out after they saw it.

[Prison Warden Chrome] (Minor Boss monster)

Level 15;

HP: 10000/10000;

Most players would think that it was in deep sleep and would try to open the cage to free its captives. That would be the worst decision ever. The NPCs in the game are quite intelligent. If the troll were really sleeping, they would have signaled to them for help. Any player who attempted to free them or even got close to them before killing the troll would be smacked by the huge club.

“Hold back,” said Shadow stopping Tang who was about to rescue the dwarves. “The troll is not sleeping,” he said looking at them. He immediately through a throwing knife at the trolls face which it deftly slapped away. Though the room was large, the troll was atleast 4 metres tall which made it hard for them to evade. This fight wasn’t an easy one and they had to fight while constantly maintaining distance from it to avoid its club. Though trolls are slow on their feet, they swing their club at very high speeds.

He wanted them to move back away and used the pillars of the place to hide whenever it swung its club. But unexpectedly another set of commands came up. They were Merlin’s. “Tang go for the feet, Quiet fire cover.”

Tang ran forwards jumped up into the air and suddenly a burst of mana formed on her feet as a layer of mana covered her shield. She accelerated in the air at a breakneck speed and struck the knees of the troll. At the same time, a huge cloak of fire sprung out of Quite Fires wand and directly fell onto its face wrapping it.

Balthazar, then realized that he had more members with unique weapons no and he had completely forgotten to look at their skills. It was a major mistake. Tangs skill was something that he seen before. It was called Meteor Smash and was a skill of the unique shield of the guardian lord (The protector).

There was a high chance that Quiet Fire’s skill was also had similar origin as he hadn’t seen that either. It was quite a powerful skill which blinds the enemy while dealing significant fire damage. With these to attack, the troll unexpectedly fell back onto pile of bones with a large crushing sound.