Chapter 50 – Darksteel Mine
Players didn’t need any official reason to kill each other in the game. They could fight just because they didn’t like the look of each other. What’s more, the Ice Rose Alliance did have a grudge with Fatty.
When Fatty was knocked out of stealth, the Invisibility was still on cooldown, so he couldn’t leave. Instead, he could still feel a bit scared after LeftHandofGod being instantly killed.
“We’re all friends here, killing each other is terrible,” Fatty chuckled.
“Haha, damn fat ass, you didn’t say that when you killed our guildmate, did you?” MarchExtinction laughed coldly. Her staff glowed red as she readied herself to cast a spell.
“Wait a moment, let’s talk,” Fatty shook his hand.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Die!” MarchExtinction lifted her hand and started to cast.
“Take a look at what this is!” Fatty suddenly took out a fist-sized ore and raised it high up in the air.
“Darksteel Ore!” one of the Ice Rose Alliance players exclaimed, clearly recognizing the ore in Fatty’s hand.
Whoosh. MarchExtinction’s hand trembled as a fire dragon soared out of her staff, barely scraping past Fatty’s head, and sizzling his air.
“Phew, phew!” Fatty frantically put the ore away and patted his chest to signal how scared he was.
Darksteel ores were one of the most important materials needed to forge high ranked weapons. Many players already reached the required Mining level to mine out darksteel ores. However, most of the ores in the outer areas of the are were just normal ores. Getting a few gold ores was already very fortunate. The only reason Fatty was even able to mine out that one piece was because the area around the old skeleton was great for mining, and his Mining skill just leveled to the Intermediate level.
“A single darksteel ore is not enough to exchange for your life,” although MarchExtinction was interested, she knew that she was in the place to name an outrageous price. What’s more, a tiny piece of darksteel ore couldn’t do anything at all. It wasn’t even enough to forge a dagger.
“I know what you want. I can lead you over, but you have to guarantee my safety.”
“If you can lead us to the Darksteel mine, then not only can we let this go, we will become friends,” MarchExtinction said as she messaged Rosethorn to ask the latter to send more people over. As a large guild, they needed way too many materials like ores. After they officially establish their guild and get their own base, the amount of materials they will need will reach an astronomical amount. Finding a high level mining area was a way of getting rich for individual players, but it was a necessity to rise to the top for a guild.
Thus, Fatty was ‘escorted’ in the middle of the squad as he directed the way towards the depths of the Bat Cave. The cave itself became darker and darker as they ventured deeper, while all sorts of sound rang out occasionally. Moreover, the illumination of fire spells also revealed bats flying over their heads.
“Don’t try anything. We can kill you anytime we want,” Although MarchExtinction felt like Fatty couldn’t possibly be trying to do anything crafty, she still threatened him as needed.
Fatty twitched his mouth, then continued to silently give directions.
“Don’t try to buy time. I’m telling you, nobody can save you,” MarchExtinction threatened every few steps. Fatty merely disregarded her. This is a rare opportunity for me with so many people protecting me. I’ll use this chance to walk around the Bat Cave and see how I’m going to complete the mission to reclaim the mine.
…
“Money Grubber, are we there yet!?” MarchExtinction begun to feel like she was tricked by Fatty an hour later. They were essentially pushing forward like a phalanx the entire way. They would leave several dozen bat corpses on the ground every step they took. What’s more, the monsters they faced had also gradually turned from Level 20 Vampiric Bats to Level 26 Demonized Vampiric Bats.
“I told you guys not to have so many people come over, but you didn’t listen. See? Now you got unnecessary losses,” Fatty had a smug grin on his face.
“Money Grubber, I will definitely not let you off if I find out you are lying,” MarchExtinction thought about it for a moment, then said fiercely.
“Whatever,” Fatty shrugged, then pointed forward and directed the squad towards a small mining tunnel.
The tunnel was too narrow, so only five people could watch side by side at a time. MarchExtinction reorganized the formations and got five knights with high defense leading the way. She continued to ensure Fatty was ‘escorted’ in the middle of the squad with several warriors following in the flanks.
The battles then began to become more difficult. Although more monsters were killed, Team Rose started to suffer casualties as well. Although 50 players with their second class enhancement sounded like quite a squad, it really wasn’t able to do much in the Bat Cave.
“Money Grubber, just how much longer do we have to go?” MarchExtinction gritted her teeth.
“Soon, it’s right in front,” Fatty answered randomly as he silently noted down the path they were taking. If he didn’t do that, then he definitely would get lost inside as there were way too many junctions in the tunnels.
“We’re here. Right there,” Fatty pointed at a random mining spot just as March Extinction’s patience was about to run out.
“Right there?” MarchExtinction’s eyes lit up.
“Yep,” Fatty nodded.
That was when MarchExtinction raised her stuff. “Alright, you can die now.”
At the same time, several warriors also thrust their swords forward.
“Shit, you guys turned even quicker than Lord fatty!” Fatty did not act flustered at all, and merely disappeared from sight.
“Attack in your surroundings,” MarchExtinction smiled, then cast her spells confidently.
Team Rose’s remaining players all attacked in a direction around them without leaving any place untouched as they trained. Yet, Fatty’s corpse did not appear like they expected after a series of attacks.
“He ran pretty fast,” MarchExintcion knew that it was extremely difficult to catch an assassin in the environment. However, she didn’t care that Fatty escaped. She merely organized her squad to clear away the Demonized Vampiric Bats, then told the players with Mining to start mining. Yet, what made her extremely speechless was that no members of Team Rose chose to get Blacksmith as their secondary profession. Therefore, they could only wait until Rosethorn sent more people over to verify whether they were at a good mining spot.
…
Ahh, poor kids, even I can’t watch it anymore. Fatty had his limbs spread out wide right on top of the thirty something Ice Rose Alliance players.
Although the Ice Rose Alliance players instantly swept their attacks over the several dozen meters around them, they completely forgot about the place above them.
Fatty nimbly got off the ceiling of the cavern, then sneaked out by the wall. Whether they could actually mine out any Darksteel ores was none of his business.
However, since he knew that a fire might attract the attention of his enemies, he did not dare to light one at all. He could only inch forward in the darkness a step at a time, turning at every single turn he saw. After doing so countless times, he finally arrived at a more spacious area.
There was a swarm of bats above his head, but Fatty didn’t care. He lit up the torch he had with him and saw that there was a huge pit in the cavern he was in. The pit was around a hundred meters wide and ten to twenty meters tall, and ores seemed to be scattered at the bottom of the pit, while several hundred zombies strolled around.
In order to complete the mission of reclaiming the mine, Fatty had to kill at least 1000 zombies and had their miner badges to the old skeleton. Thus, Fatty decided to slide down into the pit.
Since all the bats flew overhead, and the pit was actually deep enough, Fatty was not worried about getting spotted by the bats. He stealthed around for a bit, then found a torch that had already extinguished long ago.
He reached his own torch over and lit up the other torch. Then, he heard the system notification ring, which informed him that he lit up 1/1000 torches.
1000 torches? Man, I’m definitely going to have to go around the entire mine.
Nearby zombies suddenly rioted the moment Fatty lit up a torch as they begun to run as far away from the torch as possible.
Huh? Fatty suddenly recalled that the old skeleton was still around because some of the torches could still lit. He could still clearly remember black smoke rising off the Vampiric Bats when the light from the torches touched them.
The torch he lit up illuminated around an area of thirty or so squared meters. According to Fatty’s calculations, the pit itself should have around 10 torches or so to illuminate the entire area. If I want to lit 1000 torches, I’m going to have to find nearly a hundred of these pits.
Fatty wandered around the pit for a while and lit up 8 more torches before coming to the conclusion that there were only 9 torches in the pit. 8 in the surroundings, and one at the center of the pit.
When the zombies were exiled to several small dark areas, Fatty walked near one and casted Appraisal on it.
Grudgeful Zombie
Level: 23
Attack: 115-128
Defense: 90
HP: 1000
Notes: An original miner of the mine who was killed through having his blood sucked dry by vampiric bats in a night. His grudgeful feelings caused him to revive and be turned into zombies that cannot face daylight.
Fatty picked up a piece of rock and used Throw to catch the attention of one of the zombies and lure it away from where the others zombies were.
When the zombies got closer to his torch, Fatty was finally able to see what exactly the Grudgeful Zombies looked like. The one in front of him was wearing a rusted and tilted safety helmet. Its body was already dried of any traces of water. Meanwhile, it carried a pickaxe in its hand as it limped over to where fatty was.
-142
Fatty attacked first and sliced Shadowbreaker over the zombie’s arm, letting out what seemed to be a bit of black blood.
The zombie growled, then swung its pickaxe down at Fatty, who chose to take the attack head on.
-86
Meh, it’s average damage, and since it’s pretty slow, I can kill it without taking any damage.
After that, Fatty slipped behind the zombie and activated Combo to deal a bit more than 200 damage. When the zombie finally managed to turn around to attack, Fatty slipped behind it once again and continued his assault.
Under Fatty’s continuous attacks, the Grudgeful Zombie could only turn back and forth, but was never able to actually attack Fatty. Within thirty seconds, the Grudgeful Zombie let out a finally grudgeful wail, then died, leaving a few drops behind.
Fatty bent down to pick the items up. One was Miner’s Helmet, which increased the chances of getting something while mining. The other was a leg guard that gave a hefty 18 points of defense. However, the -2 DEX on it made it not so worthwhile for Fatty.
The final item was a black rectangular badge around three centers wide and ten centimeters long. Although the writing on it has already blurred, it was clear that it was a miner badge needed for Fatty’s mission.
…
While Fatty was killing a zombie, a woman let out a raging scream elsewhere in the mine.
“What? Nothing!? You’re telling me that you guys dug for more than an hour and didn’t even get a single piece of Darksteel Ore!?”
