Chapter 39 - Corrupted Forest 2 (2/2)

Knowing Vultusk's attack patterns he could easily evade it's attacks but he had to maintain a high DPS* for Vultusk to focus it's attacks on him. That was getting increasingly hard as Quiet Fire's damage increased due to the gloves.

To maintain the damage and aggro, Balthazar had decided to allocate the remaining 4 free attribute points into strength and agility with two points in each.

With Vultusk's aggro on Balthazar, and every one maintaining a steady DPS, they managed to take down the health steadily. When Vultusk had only 30% health remaining, there was a sudden changed in its appearance. It began to squeal in a babyish ”Wreatched Humans! I will eat you. I will eat you.”

The atmosphere which was tense took a sudden change once Vultusk began to speak. The babyish voice of Vultusk caused all the girls to start giggling. Vultusk was enraged and his moves also changed in both quality and speed. Also the aggro of monster resets when enraged.

It jumped in the air with its hands raised. Balthazar quickly realized the move. It was a common move from Lepusvir monsters especially warrior type ones. It was a body slam which put everyone standing on the ground into a fainted state. The only way to avoid this was to jump into the air just a moment before the it landed.

”Go back or jump away from the shock wave,” shouted Balthazar but none other than himself managed to escape the shock wave when Vultusk executed the body slam. Though Balthazar was already finished the dungeon in his previous life, it had been about 5 years since then and he hardly led any beginner level dungeons for four years of his play time. He forgot a lot of stuff that the players should be aware of. All the team except Balthazar were all put into a faint state for 5 seconds after being struck by the shock wave.

The enraged Vultusk immediately made its way towards the weakest players, the priest and the mage. It was like the aggro system had reset and even changed in type. It began to concentrate on the weaker members of the team.

Though Balthazar continued to attack it, Vultusk neglected him and continued to attack the cloth armor classes first. Little white feet had a total HP of 350 and died within 3 seconds. Immediately after that, it jumped on to Quiet Fire. The stun still wasn't gone, and Quiet Fire couldn't do anything but watch the monster jump on it.

By the time the stun effect was cleared, Quiet Fire had come to critical health and had a bleed effect on her. Even though both Tang and Blinding attacked Vultusk and helped Quiet Fire out from its grasp. With the bleed effect cast on Quiet Fire, she lost even more health.

Vultusk continued to attack without any regard to its health. Its damage also continued to increase as it began to lose health. It was clearly a berserker type monster. The lower its health went down the higher its attack went. With Quiet Fire out of harm's way they continued to gain back their advantage.

Quiet Fire was covered by Blinding as she resumed her attack on Vultusk. With Balthazar continuously attacking it without losing health, he managed to regain its aggro back on to himself.

”It will use that stunning slam attack for every 10% loss in its health. When I tell you run back at least 10 yards to escape it. If your are far even if you get hit by the shock wave you will be stunned for a shorted duration,” said Balthazar.

Though Vultusk continued to use a body slam with every 10% decrease in health, with Balthazar's guidance they managed to escape being stunned. But due to the loss of holy damage from priest, the DPS and the healing to the Tang and Blinding reduced.

Tang was already at critical health blocking the attacks for Quiet Fire. Even though Blinding tried to heal both Quiet Fire and Tang, it wasn't going well. As the health of Vultusk went down to 5% it made a large sweep attacks a couple of times and started to run away.

Though Tang had little health remaining, she tried her best to block Vultusk's path, but it was hardly of much use. Vultusk directly jumped onto Tang landing on her and squishing her torso beneath its feet. Both Blinding and Quiet could only look away from the dead body.

The visual and sensual effects of the game were downright morbid. Even the smell and spray of blood were realistic. The scene had them in shock that they forgot about holding back Vultusk. Only Balthazar was fast enough to keep up with it and continued behind it while the others were left behind in the hole.

Balthazar had already informed them that it would become worse once Vultusk goes back to the clearing. They ran quickly afraid that Vultusk's reinforcements might kill even Balthazar. By the time Quick Fire managed to reach the clearing, there was a small announcement.

”Your party managed to kill the Vultusk. Kill Vultarc and free the source of corruption from the forest.”

”+75 exp”

Vultusk alone gave them a total of 300 experience points. His large carcass was lying in the clearing before the hole, while Balthazar sitting beside it.

By the time they manged to kill Vultusk, even Tang was killed by Vultusk's attack. Though they managed to kill Vultusk, they lost their tank and healer. It would be a futile attempt to consider going further.

”That was too real for my taste. It might give me Nightmares,” said Quiet thinking of the deaths of Little White and Tang.

”We could report about it. Having such visuals in a game would actually be detrimental to the game,” added in Blinding.

”Loot it,” said Balthazar looking at the carcass of Vultusk without a concern about their talk. Well, he had a good reason for that. He already knew that all such complaints would be a futile attempt from the players.

It was a fair assumption from them concerning the game. Not only them, but a large number of players would complain about the same in the first week. Yet, the authorities would stick to the original visuals and effects.

This was because of the fact that the game had different purposes than the usual profit that could be obtained. The battle along the frontier had never been as successful as the populace was led to believe. It was already being considered as a way to acclimatize people to the horrors of the real world. The game was just a test on a large scale.

The somnium technology would be used as a common means of battle training for all military within the year. There were already talks of issuing conscription notices to people from the planets near the frontier to repel the alien invasion. The attack on Balthazar's citadel was actually the event that furthered these concerns.

But this experiment had a lot of unexpected side effects. The first one that comes to mind is many couldn't properly handle the experience. The somnium technology made their brains actually experience the fights though they didn't actually get hurt. This caused a few mental problems to the players.

There were also a large group of people who actually tried to replicate the physical feats they could do in the game in real life. Without proper supervision that lead to a lot of accidents. Cause lets face it, people in real-life don't actually have the physique their characters would have in the game.

The most prominent one is that most of the game players were usually a docile bunch in real life. But they soon got addicted to battles. Some of them even ended up becoming violent in nature due to it and actually learned to fight very well compared to the normal citizens standards. Withing 3 months of the release of the game, this situation even causes the local law enforcement to speed up their own talents using the somnium technlology.

But the all these were a discussion for another time. On Balthazar repeatedly asking her to loot the corpse without interest in their topic, Quick Fire went forward to loot it without any delay.

She first removed a skill book for warriors, Stomp. With Tang and Spice dead due to bleed out, Quiet Fire held on to it. The other was a wand for priests. They had a priest in their group and Quiet Fire held on to for the same reason.

The last one was a rare material. It was a Lepusvir claw. It could be used for forging short weapons especially daggers or throwing knifes. Balthazar asked for it as soon as he saw the claw.

”What do you use it for?” asked Quiet Fire.

”It can used in forging of knives and daggers. I have learn't blacksmithing and could use it,” said Balthazar openly. ”I can provide the compensation for the team in return.”

”Not required. It was your kill in the first place. I doubt we would have managed to take it down without you,” replied Quiet Fire tossing the claw towards Balthazar.

Note:

*DPS - Damage per second