Chapter 54. Instructor Warren

  “This is a fun reunion and everything,” Arthur said. “But it’s time to get out of here and never come back.”

  “We’re not going to finish it?” Christian asked.

  “No,” Arthur said. “It’s not worth the risk. The developers are going to shut this place down in twenty hours. If we get trapped again, we’ll never be able to play this game again. Three other dungeons were planted around the world. One in dwarven territory to the south. One up north in Elven territory. And one East, in the unclaimed lands. That’s three safer places to play.”

  “Feels weird just… leaving,” Thomas said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Even if it means losing my character. Before Janica and I fought against Clarity, we watched him reading books at a breakneck pace. Stealing all of the game lore, I think. Worse, Clarity knows about the developers shutting down the dungeon and he doesn’t care. He said as much to Janica and I. Which means that he knows more than them. If the developers are scared enough to shut down an entire zone to stop this information from getting out, what happens if Clarity succeeds? Will they shut down whole regions? Will they shut down the entire game, roll it back, develop better detection systems in a couple of years? Something larger is going on. Why else would the developers offer $50,000 to help detect this AI or stop a major game feature? No other game has ever done that before.”

  That silenced people. Hopefully I stunned them a bit.

  “Is that really our problem?” Christian asked. “The developers will take care of it eventually.”

  “Will they?” Rowan asked. “This AI snuck into the game. Took over an entire dungeon. And now seems to be outsmarting them.”

  “But how?” Arthur asked. “Even if we could get down there. We faced Clarity as a group. The witch was a double question mark. Every other mob in this dungeon scaled so that they were three levels above us. I don’t think Clarity has the same restriction. He murdered us in seconds. Trapped two of us in little cells and drained our health while fearing the other two. Only one of us at a time could even act. And if somebody dies, they come back here. Trapped.”

  “It’s a raid boss,” Janica said. She looked around as if that information meant something.

  “So?” Arthur said.

  “No,” Janica said. “You don’t get it. This boss isn’t meant to be fought with a group of five. It can be fought in a group of twenty.”

  My eyes widened. Possibilities running through my head.

  “That would give us a chance,” Arthur said, “if this game didn’t begin less than a week ago. We only have a few people in the guild with any magic at all. We’re talking basic spells. Stuff that characters have at level one in other games.”

  “I have advanced spells,” I said.

  Arthur looked at me. “No offense, Warren, but trust is earned. You gave a nice apology back there but I’m not willing to risk my character and all of my guild on nice words.”

  That stung. But it was fair. “No,” I started. “I’m not asking you to trust me to carry the guild through. I’m an Instructor. I can train your guild. I currently have Rejuvenate 2, Lightning Strike, Fireball and others. I can teach spells to your casters. We can make your guild the strongest in the game.”

  His eyes grew wide. A little smile spread on his lips. Then a frown seemed to overtake him. “Okay, that sounds great, but… and I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re all level one now. Every Job was reset. All of those stats.”

  “I still have my Skills,” Cassandra said. “Less stats, but I haven’t lost any Job Points or available Jobs.”

  “It might be an opportunity,” I said. “You can re-level using advanced Jobs. Meaning more stats for every level. Imagine replacing every level you got as a Squire with level-up bonuses as a…” I glanced at his, Christian’s and Thomas’s name tags… “as a Knight, a Sniper, a Sentinel, a Pyromancer. Better yet, Janica might be able to help you unlock some new Jobs.”

  Janica flew in front of each of them, hands behind her back like a drill Instructor. She turned and nodded at me. “These soldiers are brittle. They must be reforged.”

  Rowan laughed.

  Arthur raised an eyebrow at her. He didn’t respond, but it was clear that the wheels were turning.

  I continued. “The first and sixth levels of the dungeon are just mobs. If we farmed those early levels over and over again, we might be able to get high enough before the boss fight.”

  Arthur looked thoughtful. Intrigued even. “Janica, how is mob level calculated? Is it the average level of the party or something else?”

  “It’s three levels above the highest level in the group,” she said.

  Arthur looked at Christian. “If we brought one higher level guildie and were able to kill some mobs, we could power level ourselves.”

  Arthur turned to Janica. “How is the boss level calculated?”

  “Highest level of the group plus ten,” Janica said.

  “Our highest guildies are around ten,” he said. “So ideally, we’d have to get all of us to about that level.”

  “Is that a ‘yes’?” I asked.

  He looked at Christian, then at Thomas. Then nodded. “I need to check with the guild but… I don’t think they’ll turn something like this down.”

  “What about you two?” I asked Rowan and Cassandra. “Are you in?”

  They looked at each other. “We’re in,” Cassandra said.

  “How are we going to make it all the way to level twenty-nine?” Rowan asked. “Sixteen hours isn’t a lot of time.”

  “Do you have any Shards of Edreru?” I asked.

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  “You don’t mean the items we’re collecting to make legendary weapons with?”

  I winced. “Two are required to open a portal to the boss room.”

  “Damn it, Warren,” she said. “I was saving those for a legendary weapon… but okay.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I used mine.”

  “The word is squandered ,” Janica said.

  “Squandered,” I admitted.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Arthur said.

  “What about Henry?” Rowan asked. “He could log in at any time. We can’t just leave him.”

  “We can’t sit here and wait for him?” Arthur said. “Twenty hours is not enough time. But if we succeed in our mission, Henry will be free.”

  “We left the door open to his cage,” Cassandra said.

  “Maybe we can leave a portal open for him,” I said. “I don’t even know what floor we’re on. This place doesn’t exist on my map. We’re going to have to port out of here unless we can find a door.”

  “Why don’t you look around?” Janica suggested. “Put that Attribute to use.”

  I searched the perimeter of the room, looking for any hidden doors. I didn’t find anything. “Nothing,” I said. “But maybe for the best. I’d feel weird if we didn’t leave a port for Henry anyway.”

  Several moments later, I finished drawing the portal from my group that would open a rift between anywhere in the dungeon to the grounds on the outside. We stepped through, one by one.

  Rowan and I took one last look at Henry’s cage before we stepped through. “Seems weird,” she said. “We did all this for him, but we’re just leaving him here.”

  “Arthur’s right,” I said. “We don’t have time to wait. We haven't seen him in hours. He may never log in again. The best way to help at this point is to get Clarity out of the dungeon.”

  She nodded and stepped through.

  We met up in Sofia’s inn. The guild had taken up residence there. As Sofia had predicted, every gamer serious enough to travel to Lakemore wanted a room. They had come from far and wide to take on the dungeon.

  Twenty of us crowded around the table in the side meeting room. Ten sat at the table, including Arthur at its head. Ten against the walls behind. The mood was serious. The stakes of the mission were too high for normal pre-raid hilarity. Arthur had finished explaining the situation to them. The risk that they might lose the chance to play IO ever again if Clarity succeeded in his mission. The potential reward of stopping the AI before he could cause anymore havoc in the world. And the unusual quest reward of actual dollars. Fifty thousand dollars split, even twenty ways, was nothing to sneeze at. Plus the opportunity at another world first for Impervious.

  One girl in the back, a level eight Apprentice named Raspberry with short dark hair, shuffled her way toward the exit. “I’m out,” she said. “That’s too big of a risk for me.”

  A short man named Kab stood up. Another Apprentice. Level nine. “Me too.”

  It baffled me that some people were still stuck with the same Jobs that they had at launch. The Apprentice Job, I knew, was a precursor to spell casting. Though I knew that it was difficult to break through. You either had to find a rare item, like the Witch’s Cauldron, or you had to get the Apprentice Job all the way to level ten and become a Novice. At that point, you’d be given a choice of one of two basic spells. Fire or healing.

  People began whispering with the folks next to them. A raid group was a precarious thing. The minute there was any doubt of success, people would begin quitting the group. Losing a person or two had the chance of snowballing into a loss of five, or ten.

  Losing these two would be a crushing blow to the group.

  “Raspberry, wait,” I said.

  Twenty sets of eyes turned to me.

  I did not enjoy being the center of attention. I wiped my palms on my shirt. I switched my Job from Restorative Mystic to Instructor. “What kind of caster do you want to be?”

  She just stared at me.

  “The reason I’m asking,” I said, pointing above my head to my nameplate, “is because I’m an Instructor. I can teach you spells and possibly help you unlock a new class.”

  Whispers erupted in the room.

  “I was thinking about being a fire mage,” she said. People quieted. “I’m two levels from getting my first fire spell.”

  “Great,” I said. “I can teach you Fire and Fireball and right now. Janica, what Jobs could we unlock for Raspberry?”

  “If she masters two fire spells and gets her Intelligence to forty, she can unlock the Pyromancer Job,” she said. “It has a passive that allows burning effects to stack up to ten times. And it has one of the highest level-up bonuses for Intelligence of all the Job classes.”

  Raspberry stopped and stared at us.

  “Kab,” I said. “What about you?”

  “I want to be a healer with an awesome kit with all kinds of different spells for different situations,” he said.

  “I only have Rejuvenate and Rejuvenate 2,” I said. “But I’ll teach them to you. And we can work together to discover more spells.”

  Janica turned to me. “If you can figure out a group-wide healing spell, we can unlock the Naturalist Job,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Kab asked.

  “A Job with great Wisdom growth,” she said. “They can also specialize into spells that give them mana back, or give other casters mana.”

  He sat down and looked at Arthur. “Never mind. I’m in.”

  “Me too,” Raspberry said.

  Arthur looked around. “This is your last chance if you want out. We’ve been together a long time, but I won’t hold it against you.”