RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 155

Balthazar was quite surprised by this sudden turn of events. He didn’t expect the team to be strong enough to make the troll fall down. It also hit its head on a wall and a bunch of bones, got pushed into its body by the fall causing it to lose about 30% of its health from just the fall along with multiple bleed effects.

This completely different from the usual way to handle the troll, but it looked like it was completely feasible with the new strength of the team. Tetsujin made quick dash towards as kicked the club away from the troll. He then proceeded with a jump and the gauntlets on his hands grew spikes as he smashed them into the troll’s head.

It seemed like they planned to keep the troll down on the bones of the dwarfs. The team had been playing a defensive game for quite some time moving through the keep and were frustrated and decided to vent some of the boredom with their skills. Shadow and Sultan were the only ones who looked calm. Everyone else was busy spamming their skills.

As they were doing this, the dwarves in the cage began to shout for help as soon as the troll fell. Shadow decided that it was best to release these dwarves at this time. With the troll down, he doubted that it would be fast enough to stop him releasing them. The dwarves usually help the players in taking down monsters and for the first clear, it is best that they had more help to finish faster.

He immediately picked open the lock of the cage and the two dwarves went out to pick a couple of weapons from beside the bones and joined the fight. The others were also working on it while Merlin cast a spell which shocked the whole lot of them.

A black mist rose out of his staff and into the skull of the troll. The name of the troll suddenly changed to green and Merlin shouted for all of them to stop the attack. He had used the Subjugation skill of his Sceptre. The troll was now completely under his control.

[Prison Warden Chrome] (Merlin Grimlock’s Servant)

Level 15;

HP: 5600/10000;

“You used Subjugation?” asked Shadow. “Good call.”

“This is going to make it much easier to take care of the boss of this floor,” he thought.

“Give us all the equipment, materials, tools, designs and recipes you have with you,” asked Merlin. It was the first time that he had used the subjugation skill on a boss monster where it actually worked. He wanted to try out all the things possible and the first thing on his agenda was to get all possible loot from it.

The troll pulled out a bunch of armaments and threw them down in front of Merlin. He also put in a weapon design. It was about to disrobe too, when Merlin quickly noticed and told it to not do that. Balthazar was quite surprised. It was a very hard thing to pickpocket from boss monsters and the like and in many cases impossible as they would attack you as soon as you are near them like this one. This was the first time that he had seen all the loot from a boss monster.

“You should use this more often,” said Grenadier mage looking at the loot in front of him.

“I got lucky with this one. This is the first time it worked on a boss. It doesn’t even have a 60% success rate with elites,” said Merlin shaking his head. It was only possible when the monsters are not noticing or otherwise distracted to have a decent success rate.

There were a total of 12 armament put down by the troll, including the club that it carried. There were six bronze, three silver grade and two of them were even level 14 gold great swords. The last one was its club. It was a great haul. Especially, the two great swords, they were actually a pair of swords exactly similar to each other.

Balthazar knew the weapons as they would be used by the troll in its berserk state. They were a pair of great swords that were the same color as the troll. The passive effect was very effective in handling the last boss.

[Chrome’s Great sword] (Two handed sword)

Level 15;

Attack Power +40;

Requirement: Strength 30; Endurance: 20;

Strength +7;

Special Effect: Dwarf Soper: Attacks have a 10% chance to induce dwarves into a trance like state.

Active Skill: Chain Slash: Covers the blade with a mana that would push the opponent back slightly on every successful slash allowing one to chain their attacks. Duration: 3 seconds. Cooldown: 10 min. MP: 50 per slash.

Durability :40/40;

Getting the great sword would be considered really lucky as its attributes and passive effect were quite useful later in the dungeon. Their team had no berserker. In the game, a player could use weapons of other occupations in manual mode and the don’t have the advantage of using suitable skills. Only skills provided by the equipment could be made use of in this manner. It was hard enough to learn to use their own weapon in manual mode, let alone the weapon of other occupation.

Tetsujin was the only one who could reasonably use the great sword as his main weapons were gauntlets which allowed him to hold and used other weapons. He also used to play as a berserker in previous games and due to it, he was capable of using it decently to a certain extent. Due to the unique gauntlet, he also had better attributes than other level 14 players and could immediately equip the sword. The other sword was just placed in the bag with plans on selling it or keeping it safe when others joined the adventurer team.

Though it has very little effect on a boss, it is still useful compared to not having one at all. He just hoped that Tetsujin would be able to use the weapon effectively. Apart from that the chain slash skill is also very useful skill especially in PvP matches. Sadly, there wouldn’t be any competitions so early.

[Chrome’s Club] (Gold Two handed hammer)

Attack Power +35;

Requirement: Strength: 40;

Agility +4;

Active Skill: Smash: Makes a vertical swing of the Club causing double damage. MP: 200; Cooldown: 5 min.

The weapon design that it produced was the most valuable of all the three items. It was a silver great sword. Though it is not on the same level as the gold weapon, it still would be very popular at level 15. Moreover, it is a weapon design and multiple weapons could be produced, making it far more valuable than the design.

[Troll Cutlass] (Silver one-handed sword)

Level 15:

Requirements: Strength: 25; Agility: 20;

Materials Required: Refined Iron Ore x 3; Copper x 1;

Strength +8;

Active Skill: Deep cut: A quick slash that causes bleed effect, even when struck on armor. MP: 300; Cooldown: 2 min.

Sword designs are always the most popular. A cutlass has a wide blade allowing one to easily block attacks too and it doesn’t lose durability easily. Unlike the other swords like rapiers, cutlass is considered a saber-type sword. It doesn’t have thing pointed end and curved blade, mainly made for slashing which was the easier way for most players.

This kind of weapons though considered swords by the system were called sabers by many players and they don’t lose durability as quickly as swords as their structure is made for slashing. These become much important after the rate of loss of durability slowly increases with levels.

“Can you give it to me?” asked Balthazar as soon as he saw it. He didn’t have any intention of learning it himself but giving it to Hammer and Tongs. It would be better for the guilds development if the head forger had it. He didn’t know if he could spend much time in the game. Moreover, forging a silver equipment would also help him to try and create original bronze equipment which is a lot more valuable as that would enable Hammer to make designs.

“I will pay for it. I am not asking for free,” continued Shadow as he noticed that Merlin was thinking of it.

“I am thinking of auctioning it,” said Merlin with a smile. He wanted to get more money and he felt that auctioning it was the best option for them. “It is the best option for the team. It is just not my decision, even the others own a part of it.”

“I shouldn’t have been so open,” thought Balthazar as he realized that Merlin was hiking up the price.

“Under any other circ.u.mstances, I would have agreed, but today I might not be there at the end of the day. We both know that it is best to auction it today. It would get the best price when only a very little number are at level 15,” said Shadow. “So, suggest a price.”

“Oh!” said Merlin as thought about it.

At the same time, Balthazar also realized that it would be improper for him to ask it in this manner too. “I will tell Rudra to make a buyout from auction house. That would be better,” thought Balthazar. The auction house will always allow for a buyout price if a player wants to get anything quickly and not wait for others to notice the item and place bids.

“I could just transfer him the amount of gold I got in the Cave of Wargs. It would be more than enough. I need to separate the adventurer team from my workshop for business related things. Else it would result in resentments.”

“Let it be. Rudra will bid for it,” said Balthazar.

“Ok,” said Merlin. He was also glad that Balthazar realized his dilemma. It was fine at this stage when the team is small for them to do it internally, but such behavior would cause issue when there are more people joining Blazing Fury. Merlin was also worried as he realized this and that was the reason, he suggested an auction so that Shadow would realize.

“Hurry now, we must stop the traitor Barak,” said a dwarf as they were discussing the price. The other were already back in the tunnels when Merlin and Shadow along with the troll were discussing about the design. Merlin and Shadow also followed behind the others quickly as Sultan left the instructions for their movements.

They soon joined the rest of the team and on the way, they met with another group of orcs which ambushed them from a tunnel to the side. This time, Merlin told them to hold off on all their attack to check the prowess of his new servant.

The goblin took 8 swings to kill 10 orcs. It hardly took a minute for the orcs to be pulverized, but the others told Merlin to not use it again as they didn’t get any loot from the smashed-up orcs. In fact, they didn’t even feel like foraging on looking at the gory scene of smashed up orcs.

They continued on their way till they reached the end. They were in a large room with stairs which led downwards at the end of it. There were a number of pillars, tables, chairs and boxes in the room. It looked like some kind of warehouse. A bunch of orcs were quarrelling amongst themselves while a relatively big orc sat on a table beside the stairs.

[Gularg Orc Shaman] (Boss monster)

Level 15;

HP: 12000/12000;

The huge orc was almost the same size as the troll which Merlin subdued. It had a dagger in one hand which it was using as a fork to cut up meat with a sickle sword hanging of its hip and large staff leaning on to the table beside it. It was clearly one of the orc shamans. As they entered the room, the fighting suddenly subsided and all the orcs including Gularg, looked at them.

“Kill the intruders,” shouted Gularg as he threw the dagger in his hand which flew towards big troll causing it a damage of 1000 HP. Luckily, Sultan and Bitter Beast had kept healing the troll on their way as they knew that it would be their strongest asset against bosses.

The other orcs which were a bit more than twenty in number rushed over waving their weapons. “Merlin get the troll to attack the small ones. We shall counter the boss,” said Shadow as he ran behind the pillar to get to stealth. He wanted to attack the boss. Only Mob, Grenadier and Bitter Beast remained to support Merlin while the others followed him to attack the boss.

This boss wasn’t much hard to take down. It had a few fierce moves but also gets tired after them. One only needed to attack it at this time, and it could be easily killed. The main problem were the other orcs. They need to be killed else they would protect the boss with their lives whenever it took a respite. But once five of the orcs were killed the boss would go berserk, attack the players who killed the other orcs until those players were dead and remain in the berserk state. It would fight in tandem with its companions and attack on the other orcs would gather the aggro of Gularg.

Due to this, the players always didn’t kill these orcs but controlled them and attacked the boss during its respites. Without the others dying it would only get to berserk state at 5% of its health. At that time, it required less effort to empty the rest of its health. Balthazar also planned to continue with the same tactic, but the troll servant offered another option.

As the troll would be used to kill the other orcs while the held it back for some time, its aggro would be established on the troll. This would give them the opportunity to be free from the aggro of the orc shaman.

As he had expected, the troll immediately swung its club at the incoming orcs killing two of them in four swings. It was clear that the troll was a lot more fearsome than the orcs. The shaman orc also immediately raged at the troll.