Chapter 154 - Bungars Keep (1/2)

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.