The surface of all the furniture was covered in small, chittering insects. As one, the mass seemed to have taken notice of my presence and had started to lift off.
I let loose a fireball into the centre of the room and then took a step back, into the corridor, and behind the wall, to give myself some cover.
The subsequent kaboom shook the windows and sent a blast of hot wind, strong enough to ruffle my coat and hair, down past me to the door. The smell of burning hair and charred creatures soon followed it.
“Damn…” George exclaimed as he and the others followed me in. A couple of the insects had survived, but they were quickly dispatched. “These swarmers are usually a huge pain in the ass.”
The next apartment had a small family of rats nesting on the bed. Voice took the lead and charged in with his shield. Sam and George didn’t give Daisy or me a chance to meaningfully contribute, as their weapons made short work of the stunned creatures.
I got to play in the next two apartments, both home to swarms of insects. My Fireball made short work of them and helped bring me up to 75% of the kills I needed for that spell’s mage quest.
The next apartment started off like the nesting rats. After the melee fighters were committed to the ones on the bed, another swarm of the vermin came out of the skirting board air vents. I reacted by casting
It was the first time I had attempted to cast a conflicting school through one of my magic staves. The spell went through, but I got the feeling it didn’t like it. The blade was shorter in length and looked slightly less substantial to my eye. I impaled a couple of the creatures, keeping myself between the emerging swarm and our healer.
I misjudged some of the rats; they zigged when I thought they would zag. I ended up using the butt of my staff to send them back at their growing number emerging from the vent. It marked the point in the conflict where I started to feel overwhelmed. I changed the spell into its scythe form and cleaved through some of the scurrying creatures. I was just starting to get forced back and was considering a
The next apartment was fortunately empty of hostiles, so we took a moment to refresh our food buffs with a meal prepared by Sam and Daisy in the bedsits kitchenette.
“Good heals, now food buffs… I can’t believe how clean this run is going…touch wood,” George enthused as he sprawled out on one of the apartment's generic sofas, his hand reaching out to tap the nearby cheap mass-produced coffee table. “Thanks, V, for inviting me to this. Can’t believe I almost turned you down.”
“No worries, G. We had fun earlier, so I knew you would fit in with my guildies.”
“I’d seen some posts talking about how much better magic really was… but until you see it in person… wait… did you say guildies?”
“We started talking about it before. What are your plans for in-game?” Voice asked our maul-wielding companion.
“Originally, I was going to go smash up in the PVP zone. Had so much fun in the playtest with my maul, but now…I’m having fun just kind of looking around. Buddy of mine has been raving about the fun he has been having learning to blacksmith…creating something sounds like it could be entertaining as well… and then there is the fun stuff we have been finding in the towers, never thought I would actually look forward to grinding randomly generated content… but it’s legitimately fun.” Voice gave me a questioning look. I returned it with a ‘it’s your choice, I have no objections’ shrug.
A moment later, George’s eyebrows shot up. He looks at Voice, then at me, back at Voice. “No way… really? Fuck me… You found a guild already? Dude!”
I got a pop-up informing me that ‘George McSmashEm has joined your guild.'
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Welcome to the Seekers of Knowledge,” I told him.
“Thanks for inviting me! There are so many posts talking about the hoops you need to jump through to start one. You guys must have been playing hard all weekend.”
‘[SOK]Peachy…: NEW PERSON! HELLO!’
‘[SOK]Jacobs…: Salutations!’
‘[SOK]George…: Hi! Happy to be here.’
‘[SOK]Vox…: Found this guy while clearing towers this morning. He’s helping us again in tower 46, so I dragged him in!’
‘[SOK]Jacobs…: Nice! We’re just coming back on after breaking for dinner. How is it going so far?’
‘[SOK]Aenara…: One Boss down, about a third of the way around the next floor.’
‘[SOK]Vox…: I started us on a 5…possibly should have gone higher with how quickly we are clearing.’
‘[SOK]Golden…: Probably the best choice, there has been some fighting kicking off in the towers cleared to the teens. The hand-in doesn’t care about who did the clearing; barely anyone is respecting the assignments anymore. Overlords started it. They blocked the entrance to tower 16, claimed it was reserved for them and killed any of the parties who got assigned a floor in it for clearing. A few of the other groups started doing the same. Most of the sub-30 towers are now being sat on and farmed, not being properly cleared.’
‘[SOK]Jacobs…: Some tried talking to the Wardens about it, but they were dismissive. As long as the towers are getting cleared and the floors re-cleared until the whole building has been conquered, they don’t care who does it. It’s pushing unaffiliated players into harder towers…deaths are up. Ours is just one of 4 groups now actively trying to clear the towers and not just turning them into easy experience farms. They have scouts in the office building spying on which towers are worth poaching. Anything in the teens is considered valuable real estate. If it hits 25, though, they consider it too hard. ’
‘[SOK]Aenara…: So we should aim to clear this whole tower before handing in?’
‘[SOK]Golden…: Oh, I'd love to see the look on their faces if a noob party cleared out a tower from under them…’
‘[SOK]Jacobs…: You know… that might be a solid idea… we could open a new tower and try and clear it one go…’
‘‘[SOK]Damian…: Evening. We’d have to find some way to block off the entrance. Just heard from Sally’s team that the Overlords killed them in the middle of a boss fight, and when they got back in, their hand-in had been stolen and they only got partial credit for the floors they cleared. We’re known to be challenging the tougher floors, so if we suddenly go into a new tower…’
“Food is served,” our chefs declared as they passed out tasty fajita-style wraps they had put together.
[Well Fed]
‘You have satiated your hunger, that your body feels raring to go. Bonus to physical stats’
“This food is so tasty!” George groaned happily between mouthfuls. “Physical stat bonuses? Damn, I’ve just been making sure I don’t go into famished… didn’t realise food gave actual bonuses…”
“Yeah, just a pity I only got good quality on the food. The rare kebabs I made on the island gave better bonuses…” Sam said.
With an almost practised ease, we circled the floor, clearing out the apartments.
“Ahh, a plant room,” George said with a grin as we approached the next door, which was on the other side of the corridor. “I was wondering if we would see one of these on the floor.”
The next door led into a room with a number of pipes and valves, a server rack, a computer in the corner, and several electrical panels.
“Usually, these are puzzle rooms. Sometimes people get missions to come into an explored tower and fix something in one of these rooms,” Voice told us. “Groups have been asked to replace cable, fix pipes, and redirect water. The computer is usually the place to look to work out what is wrong.”
We crowded around the computer terminal, which didn’t respond. Voice tried the on and off button. He looked at me, I looked at him, and then, as one, we looked to see if the machine was plugged in. It was. I followed the power conduit to one of the electrical panels. Opening it up, I found all of the switches were set to off. I pulled the main switch to on, but the indicator light stayed off. I switched it back off and followed the conduit to the next box.
In this one, there were five conduits coming out. One went to the box I had just come to, marked services. Two were set to on and were labelled lighting and electricity. The other two were labelled pumps and heating. I pulled the breaker for services, returned to the first panel and the indicators were now on. I reset the breakers and the computer beeped as it started booting up.
The machine had booted up and Voice was clicking through the menu options when I got over to join them.
“We need to balance the power to the floor, restoring water pressure and heating,” Voice said.
“We can skip it,” George added. “Most groups do, and then someone who likes solving these sorts of puzzles can pick it up as a quest chain.”
“So to fully clear a building, all the floors’ plant rooms will need to be solved?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, the building needs to be cleared and then fully brought back online. Once that is done, it will be opened up to the public for homes and retail,” George confirmed.