Healer Book 4 -- Chapter 38

Chapter 38

“You ready to go?”

Thaden looked up from where he had been lightly napping in his chair, the lazy boredom of the afternoon leading him to sleep with nothing better to do.  Seeing Steven and the rest of his Core Raid Party, as well as a number of strangers who were members of Guilded Glory, he nodded with a smile at the Blade Stalker.

He was eager to get back to that dungeon and absolutely crush it once again.

“Absolutely.  We’ve got a long way to go, so let’s get started.”

Thaden invited everyone to join his Raid Party, putting himself as the Raid Leader, before he started casting spells on everyone to help speed them on their way.  Before he cast his first spell, however, he stopped himself and addressed everyone as they gathered around.

“This is my first time casting upon anyone since my Class change,” he warned them.  “If you haven’t heard by now, there is a 1% chance with my new Class that any single-target spells or abilities used by anyone can cause instant death on the one targeted.  If that happens, I’ll be able to resurrect any that accidentally die, so don’t panic.  What that means is that if you have any single-target spells or abilities you need to use on yourselves, do that now, or hold off until we get to the dungeon.  Does everyone understand?”

About two-thirds of the Raid Party were new to him, and subsequently hadn’t known about this little tidbit of information, and they immediately balked at his warning.

“That’s impossible!  Your Class doesn’t say anything about causing instant death, and Rachel didn’t say anything about being led by someone who would cut our PICK by 99%—”

Steven, who had heard Thaden’s explanation as he had told the Guild Leader the day before, cut off the protester.  “Shut it!  It’s a special situation; not everything is as it seems.  Just cool it for now and it’ll become pretty clear when we get to the dungeon that everything has already been considered and evaluated by the Guild Leader.”

“But—”

“Listen, none of you have to come that don’t want to,” Thaden announced.  “That being said, Steven is correct; I’ve already spoken with Rachel and been given permission to lead this—and hopefully many more—Raids, so if you’re coming along, I expect you to follow my instructions.  Do I make myself clear?”

There was some grumbling, but to his surprise, no one stormed off in a huff.  “Good.  Now, I’m going to start casting; just remember what I said.”

One-by-one, Thaden cast Health Augmentation, Overheal, and Health or Mana Transformation on everyone, to give them a higher Health pool and to allow them to convert some of their Mana or Health into Celerity, allowing them to move faster.

It took until the seventh member of his Raid Party that he focused on for the 1% chance of death to trigger.  The Omenic Drifter quickly resurrected the poor Mage he’d been targeting, but the other members of his Party still gasped in shock when it happened; despite the warning, they still hadn’t believed it was real.  It was also the first time that he’d killed someone accidentally like this, which made him see firsthand just how messed-up this new Class was.  Thaden had known from the start how crazy this whole chance of death was, but seeing it in action against those who had no defense against it was, frankly, frightening.

Still, no one fled or decided they wanted to leave, and so he kept going.  Buffing the other 99 members of the Raid Party ended up killing 5 others, with one poor Fighter dying twice in a row, but thankfully his Resurrection cooldown was about 15 seconds by that point, so it didn’t take too long for him to keep it going.  In about 10 minutes, longer than it normally would’ve taken, they were ready to go.  With a cast of Mass Regeneration and an activation of Aura of Life, neither of which were single-target and therefore not risking any death, everyone was being healed to the extent of which Overheal could increase their Health pool, they were off.

Of course, within a few minutes of running at about 30 miles per hour, the fastest that the slowest members of the Raid Party could sustain for long periods of time, Steven came up to him and asked, “You picked up the Quest, right?”

Thaden wanted to smack himself in the forehead.  “Uh, no.”  For some reason, he had completely forgotten about picking up the Quest; it would’ve been more than easy to do while he was waiting, and he cursed to himself for forgetting such a thing.

“You need to go get it, then, because it’s the entire point of doing this dungeon,” Steven told him.  That was news to the Omenic Drifter, as the Guild Leader hadn’t mentioned anything about the Quest.

Nodding, Thaden was already changing out his cape for the Wyvern’s Cloak.  “Keep running; I’ll be back as soon as I can.”  With those instructions, he took off into the air, flying back toward the city.  It only took him about 15 minutes to get through the gate and to the Adventurer Coalition building, where he quickly found the Guild Quest Registrar, whom he’d visited enough from his previous Raids that he knew what to look for.  Quickly pointing out the Quest for The Ghost Town, he thanked the young-looking Charee behind the counter, before racing back out. 

It wasn’t until he was out of the city gates and flying back toward his running Raid Party that he finally looked at the Quest. 

[Quest Type: GUILD PROGRESSION

Guild Tier Requirement: Tier 5

Quest Time Limit: 30 days

Quest Difficulty: Low-Medial

Minimum Recommended Level: 220

Minimum Recommended Party Size: 200

Quest Description: Investigate and complete the Intermediate dungeon, The Ghost Town, on Minimal difficulty with a Raid Party; only available for members of the same Guild.

Completion Requirements: Completely clear the Intermediate dungeon, The Ghost Town (Minimal)

Quest Rewards: 3,000 gold, 100,000 PICK, +6 toward Guild Tier Progression

Bonus Completion Requirements: Completely clear the Intermediate Dungeon, The Ghost Town, (Minimal) with half or fewer than the minimum recommended party size

Bonus Quest Rewards: All prior rewards in addition to 20 Rank Progress up to Diamond and +18 toward Guild Tier Progression]

It only took him a single read-through of the Quest to finally understand why the Guild Leader had chosen this dungeon for him to lead a Raid through.  He had originally suspected some sort of foul play, given his suspicions of mind-control still be valid, but in reality, it was simply business – and a high-risk play on the part of the Guild Leader. 

“She’s obviously gambling on your ability to pull off miraculous dungeon delves to capitalize on Quests like this.”

He nodded to himself and Sadia as he saw what she was talking about.  Normally, the GUILD PROGRESSION Quests he’d done with his Raid Parties gave +3 toward Guild Tier Progression as a rule; this Quest, however, was double that at +6.  Granted, this Quest would also allow up to 200 member of the Guild to participate, so by only taking 100 people, the results would be basically even. 

But that was where the “Bonus Completion” section came in.  If the Quest was completed by half or fewer than the minimum recommended party size, the rewards for that were incredible.  While the 20 Rank Progress up to Diamond mattered absolutely nothing to him, since he was already Diamond-Ranked within the Coalition, the +18 toward Guild Tier Progression was three times the original reward – and it would also include that original reward.  In other words, by completing this dungeon with a Raid Party of 100, each person would be getting +24 toward Guild Tier Progression, an incredible amount, considering that it was approximately 8 times what a normal Quest would provide for dungeons around their current average Level.

But Rachel was shrewd, because she knew about his Achievement bonuses such as Army Of One, which would triple these rewards, as well as his new Class trait that he’d mentioned, which could double it.  So, if they were able to succeed and everything went their way, they were looking at 144 Guild Tier Progression per person, which was almost half of an entire Raid Party completing one of the Intermediate dungeons around their Level. 

Granted, there was also the possibility that the rewards could be nullified, but even if half of them were nullified (which he doubted would happen to that extreme), the net increase of Guild Tier Progression would still be around 3,600 for 50 members of the Guild if it stayed the same and didn’t double.  That was the equivalent of running 12 Intermediate dungeons with a normal 100-person Raid Party – and that was on the extreme low end of chance; the real number would probably be over 10,000 Guild Tier Progression or higher when he considered that perhaps a third of the people would double their rewards and only a few would get nothing – which was incredible for a single dungeon run.

Plus, the chances that many of the members of his Raid Party would get nothing as a reward were even smaller than it had been, especially after Thaden distributed his free stat points.  With 2,125 points to decide what to do with, after some serious deliberation with Sadia, his decision was fairly easy.  While Physicality was tempting to increase, he had ways of increasing it already through his spells, as well as his Health pool; at the moment, with his bonuses, he was doing millions of points of damage to his enemies, and while being able to do even more damage was nice, it wasn’t exactly needed.  Plus, as he Leveled-up, it would naturally increase, along with his Celerity and Mentality.

As for those latter two stats, once he increased his Level enough to wear his new set of Legendary equipment, Celerity and Mentality would shoot way up.  As a result, he saw absolutely no reason to stick any of his free stat points into either of them, joining Physicality in the “no” list. 

That left Personality and Fortuity.  Only a short while ago, he would’ve ignored Fortuity as a possibility, as once he had gotten it to a certain point, it didn’t seem to help all that much with his Lifewarden bonus traits, which maxed-out at a 50% chance of activating.  But with his new Class, Fortuity became even more vital than ever, as it seemed to be an important component to his newest spells – and his traits, such as the chance to nullify or double the rewards received in a party. 

But his new Class also came with a reduction of his Personality, the difficulty of which wouldn’t be felt for a while, perhaps not for hundreds of Levels, but it would eventually become an issue.  While he didn’t want to invest too much into it, he also didn’t want to take the chance that he wouldn’t receive any other free stat points to shove in the stat in the near future to shore up its falling state.

Therefore, with 2,125 stat points to distribute, he pulled out 325 of those points and stuck it into Personality, with the remaining 1,800 going into Fortuity, bringing it above 3,000 at its base. 

Physicality – 2,160 (5,553)

Celerity – 2,146 (6,475)

Mentality – 4,888 (15,551)

Personality – 1,128 (3,738)

Fortuity – 3,035 (5,726)

And those numbers ere before the rapid increase in his Fortuity, which also brought with it some new Achievements. 

Congratulations on reaching 1,500 in Fortuity!

Achievement received: Luck Of The Draw II

Bonus reward: 50,000 PICK

Omenic Drifter Class trait activated!

Bonus reward: 75,000 PICK

Contender World First Achievement: 200,000 PICK; When Fortuity influences extractions, increase Common, Uncommon, and Rare item extractions by 50%

Omenic Drifter Class trait activated!

Bonus reward: 300,000 PICK; When Fortuity influences extractions, increase Common, Uncommon, and Rare item extractions by 75%

Congratulations on reaching 3,000 in Fortuity!

Achievement received: Luck Of The Draw III

Bonus reward: +25 to Celerity and Personality

Omenic Drifter Class trait activated!

Bonus reward: +38 to Celerity and Personality

Contender World First Achievement: +100 to Fortuity; When Fortuity influences the outcome of chance-related spells, abilities, and traits, increase the likelihood of a positive outcome by 30%

Omenic Drifter Class trait activated!

Bonus reward: +150 to Fortuity; When Fortuity influences the outcome of chance-related spells, abilities, and traits, increase the likelihood of a positive outcome by 45%

Not only did he receive even more PICK and some stats from the Achievements regarding his Fortuity, but he also would receive 75% more loot from items that were Common, Uncommon, or Rare in Rarity – which wasn’t that big of a deal, but he wasn’t going to complain.  But the greatest bonus from these Achievements was the 45% increase in the likelihood of a positive outcome for all chance-related spells, abilities, and traits.

“Yes, that should influence even your party reward trait, meaning that it is even more likely that their rewards will be doubled.  It should also affect your spells such as Repose, Repast, and External Stimulation.”

Therefore, in addition to his Fortuity – with his equipment – nearly at 6,000, which should significantly boost the possibility of a positive outcome of his trait, the additional 45% increase to that possibility was a great boon.  Unfortunately, it didn’t affect his 1% chance of death trait, because that was a flat chance and one not influenced by Fortuity.

It didn’t take that long to catch up with his Raid Party, who had only moved about 10 miles from where he’d left them, which was headed to the southwest; the reason it was going to take until the next day to reach The Ghost Town was because—at least on foot—they needed to travel around the mountain range that flanked the valley near Darkwood Vale, which added another 90 miles or so to the journey; while it was possible to go travel over the mountains, it couldn’t be done easily or fast, and experiments had supposedly shown that it actually added time in the end rather than cut it. 

“Welcome back.  Got it now?” Steven asked as soon as he landed and ran along with the others.

“Yep.  And now I finally see why we’re going.”

The Blade Stalker chuckled.  “She didn’t even tell you, did she?”

“Nope.”

“I guess she just assumed you’d figure it out on your own,” he said.  “Regardless, we’re on our way to make history… and to catapult us to the top of the Rankings, if we’re lucky.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be doing something of the sort,” Thaden replied, hoping that everything went just as smoothly as before.  While most of his suspicions about this dungeon had been largely alleviated after seeing the Quest, he was still going to be as careful as possible.

He didn’t think anything bad would happen, but he wasn’t going to make the mistake of letting his guard down.