As I draw back the knife, blood flows over my hand and the quest completes.

You kill Zumlon the dark wizard.

Quest chain: A daring endeavor

You defeated the dark wizard.

Reward: 1400xp, 50gp, Part 2

You have reached level 4!

You have reached level 5!

Throwing knife skill level 5!

Hide skill level 5!

That was a huge experience point gain! I just gained two levels and upped some skills. I look at my character sheet and I assign one of my skill points to strength and another to dexterity and see a nice bump in my hit points.

NightFlower: Rogue (level 5)

Stats

Attribute

Value

STR

2

WILL

1

DEX

6

Hit points

24

Abilities:

Ability

Level

Hide

5

Slash

1

Throwing knife

5

Alchemy

1

14 advanced classes available

Technical sub-classes available at level 50

*zero stats not shown

I close my character sheet and start to look around—there must be a ton of loot in here. But first, I look down at the dead wizard and kick him. “Let’s start with you.”

Looting the wizard is simple—he is wearing a sheet. His robes need to be identified in town, and I cannot determine their value. He has a knife I’m not able to identify and several keys. The book he was writing into was a grimoire that is not readable by me, at least not yet. This all goes into my bag. I see on the top of the metal mobile that landed on the wizard is a painted smiley face. This is the game developers’ little joke for anyone thinking the ceiling trick would make for an easy kill.

Looking more around his house for things to take, I find a fancy-looking chest on a pedestal. Standing to the side to open it with one key does not work. I am rewarded with a gas bomb that takes half of my health and stinks the place up, so I retreat and let the air clear while I heal. My health back to 100%, I step up and gently open the chest from the side with my knife. This wizard seemed to be paranoid.

The chest contains a level-nine skill book called Summon Familiar and has a note. I pick up the note and read “For the Baker.” There is also a wooden box which contains a deck of cards, the backs of which have intricate vines with glowing eyes painted on them. When I look closely, the eyes seem to blink. The deck of cards has a slight golden glow. I use identify.

Deck of transmutation

Deck of cards/epic/soul-bound

This is one of the Fabled Decks, cards created by the infamous wizard Molocosto. A card may be drawn once per day, and the person who draws the card will take on a random animal form for a short period of time.

Oh damn, this is good. It’s soul-bound, which means I cannot ever lose this item unless I purposely destroy it. There was an article that had made the rounds about how Imagine Online wanted to randomize a lot of the upper-level magic gear. They had settled on magic dice, cards, mahjong, runes, dominos, and even a magic 8-ball for randomized effects and skills. The rumors about these items caused a lot of online jokes prior to launch. People joked their weapons could randomly turn into wet noodles. Puns aside, nobody knew for sure that these items were real.

Well, here I am, and this is one of those items.

I’ve got to try it!

I pick up all the cards and go through them. They are all blank on one side and they each look like the card Dr. Friend gave me. I shuffle the deck and place them back into the case, then I pull a single card out and look at it. In the corners of the card, like a regular playing card, are numbers and they have a suit. Here the card is a Three of Cups and the image on the card is of a large snake coiled around—and eating—a flailing human. I feel the card dissipate and return to the deck. My feet join, and my body elongates, stretching out as my bones feel like they are melting into my core. I slither forward and curl up around a chair, now a snake. My player display is different, I have several snake skills to use and forty-one hit points. I can see this being useful, but because of the randomness, planning for what kind of animal you become is not possible.

Checking the display, I see an icon of the transformation and mentally toggle it. I feel my snake body shudder, then split and form legs as my arms peel off the sides. The de-transformation completes, and I am back my body, standing as I was when I first looked at the card.

I try use my perception in the wizard’s main room to spot hidden books. More skill books would be great, but I see nothing more I can loot except an alchemical kit, which I take. I look around the house, trying to find the wizard’s bedroom, but can’t spot one. It looks like he slept in a couch in a corner of the first floor and there is nothing to loot there.

I look at the keys and decide it is time to go check the laboratory behind the main house. I see then that Kian and Briar have logged in. They will probably get the quest complete rewards. I hadn’t dropped the party and they must be getting at least partial experience for it; this was a party quest. They are probably on their way here right now; I ping the map with a party pin just in case. It is a little pin that shows my position which they are able to see I figure I have about fifteen minutes before they arrive, and I wind up hoping they can loot something from the wizard or they are going to be upset with me.

Going out the back door I approach the laboratory and use another of the keys on the door. From the side, I try to open the door, so I avoid any traps. The door unlocks and opens with a light push of my foot. I wait a second, and then step inside.

The building is well lit and has beakers and vials and glass jars everywhere—this is a complete alchemical laboratory. The wizard was not just a wizard, it looks like he was an alchemist as well.

On a dais in the center of the room is a large hide-bound book that shimmers as I look at it; my perception makes it light up. I check for traps and approach. There are two chests to either side of the dais and I decide that I should wait for Kian and Briar for those, but I want to look at the sparkling volume.

I approach the dais and gaze at the shifting patterns on the pages of the book. It is open roughly one-third of the way, and as soon as I glance at the tome the pages begin to rapidly turn. Frozen in place, I see shifting symbols and what look like letters swirl and move across the pages.

New skill: Alchemy

With an alchemical kit you can make potions.

A new skill, this is great. am thinking the wizard was a creature I was not expected to kill at my level. I decide that I shouldn’t loot any more until the guys get here.

I step outside and go around the front of the building as Kian and Briar come jogging up.

“How did you complete the quest?” Kian asks.

I lead them into the inside of the house, where they each can loot items from the wizard, though there’s only minor items and gold left.

“You seriously dropped the roof on this guy,” Briar states, looking at the jagged metal. “That is so cool. I bet he looked shocked when you did that, eh? What a jerk this guy was, I’m glad you bombed him—

“I was just going to try; I didn’t think I would kill the wizard with my daggers,” I say with a flush avoiding that the ceiling plan didn’t work, ”I wasn’t trying to steal loot from the party or anything. Though, I did get this.” I pull out the deck.

“That is really cool but, seems pretty limited for usefulness.” says Kian, though his eyes linger on the deck. “It’s not a big deal, we still got full experience for the quest and gained two levels. You probably got more for the wizard, but really that’s fine. Let’s go out to the laboratory.”

“Kian, step up there and look into that book,” I ask as we enter the workshop, where I point to the skill book.

He smiles and steps up. The book flashes for a second, and Kian turns and says, “Oh damn, a skill book, Briar, get up here.”

Briar looks into the book and it flashes. I step up and close the book and hand it to Kian—this could be useful for barter later. I point the two chests. “Anyone want to open those?” Kian and Briar each take one and do a three, two, one open. Neither were trapped and just contained multiple potions. We pick up twenty healing potions, another ten night-vision potions, several potions for armor and speed, and one for invisibility.

“What a haul,” Briar says as we look for more loot in the laboratory.

“I have an idea, you guys,” I say, “though you might not like it. I think there is a way we can get through the raid.”

***

In the town square of Kesmai is a queue of people waiting to get into the group battle instances. For instances, they can queue up as a group and arena battle other similar groups from all other parts of the world who also queued up. I see a lot of chats in the local channel requesting healers and tanks. Walking past the mob, I what we came for; a set of curved stairs going down into a large pit in the ground with the system notice.

Yaoguai Lair’s (contest)

Epic beginner dungeon.

While digging a new well the residents of Kesmai have disturbed the lair of a skeletal Yaoguai. It is an evil entity who immediately attacked the town and killed many residents. Now, once per week, creatures from this pit rise and attack the town and must be beaten back.

This version of Yaoguai’s Lair is a special dungeon for beginner players. The first clan to complete the instance in each region will receive one of the three fortresses for the area.

I want to inspect the first part of the dungeon and see if we can farm it. If we make it as far as we can each time gathering the experience for that initial section. Done right, we will gain levels quick. After some time, we should be able to make it to a mini-boss we can kill on each run to get gear and gold.

Descending into the pit I see a platform that has a lever; it is marked in the interface as the way to begin the instance. It would be suicide for me to go in without a full party, so I step back. I wait in the shadows as a group comes down the stairs; they are a lower-level group made up of a couple fighters, a mage, and a cleric. They pull the lever and the platform lowers, and then as they are lowering into the earth a new platform appears in place of the original after about ten seconds.

From the side I can see there are crates and other assorted items on the platform. One crate, which is open and facing the wall, has something shining inside. Nobody is coming down the stairs, so I slink up and check it. On the outside I see all the crates say Jenkins Apples and most appear to have been broken and smashed. On the inside I spy a gleaming and pulsating light. I get closer, climbing into the crate. From inside I see that there are stylized silver words etched into the wood which say Eye of God. That name is odd—I know an early game reference for that. That was a named bug, exploited in an old game called Mankind, a space simulator from the early part of the century. That specific bug allowed access to a developer-only ship named the Eye of God. That ship could clean an entire star-system, potentially wiping out years of players’ in-game work. That game-killing bug caused most of the players to flee Mankind. Those players ended up flocking to a new space game named Eve Online.

“Okay, you guys ready?” a young male voice says. I almost knock my head on the inside of the box, and quickly duck farther in.

Ginga! I am on the platform, I peek through the slats of the crate and see this is a low-level party. I should be able to sneak off—

The platform creaks and descends.

A rousing orchestral soundtrack dominates my audio channel and I see a cut scene of a great battle in the valley above. The narrator, clearly enjoying himself, starts in, “Our hero answers the challenge to cleanse the island of Kesmai of the evil from the deep. Will she prevail and rescue the people of the island who depend on her?”

I think we didn’t get the whole ‘depends on’ starting quest for this instance.

The cutscene dips into the pit I entered and flies into a tunnel ahead toward a large skeletal creature. The monster turns as the camera flies into its mouth and goes dark. The music stops and I’m suddenly back in the box, still hidden.

I am in the instance with them and they don’t know it.

The players run forward, but I can’t see ahead well without being near their light. I can see their torches in the distance. I hear growls and yelling, the sounds of a battle. Then I hear screams and just as quickly as it started, I can tell I’m alone in the instance.

I wave my hands, swiping into the interface, and find the exit button. I de-instance back to area right before the platform. Slipping into the shadows to think, I have the beginnings of plan. If we can pull it off, it will be exactly what we need.

***

In the town square, I watch from the shadows as groups roll into and out of the instance. I see Briar and Kian both also nearby watching; we are on local party communications and can talk with one another. I had finished explaining the glitch I found with the instance. We agreed we need to look for the perfect party to follow in.

I got the loot from the wizard identified by a merchant earlier and found out the robe is a level 8 Robe of Casting, which supplies a casting speed boost. The spell book also level 8 and was empty and has a +2 bonus to spell damag. The knife is called Night Pick and is a level 8 knife that has bonus darkness damage. Sadly, I cannot use any of the items yet. I really wish I could equip the knife and see how much damage it does, as I definitely need an upgrade.

“Here come these clowns again, the dorky-party guys from the forest,” says Briar, breaking my thought.

“The fighter looks like he gained another level or two and is getting more tanky,” Kian says, repeating what I see using my Inspect skill.

“Still dorks,” says Briar.

“Let me go check these guys out, they are forming up on the side.” I say.

I quickly leap through the shadows towards the party. When I am within hearing range of them, I inspect their members. The cleric is now level nine, and the two fighters are both level eight. They are all in new gear from the last time I saw them. I get a little closer to overhear.

“Okay, this our best shot,” the cleric says. "We are higher level than any group and we almost had it last time.” His armor is silver chain-mail, a helm, impressive black bracers, boots, and gloves. For a weapon he carries his hammer, which I cannot inspect. He has a holy symbol around his neck that I don’t recognize, though I have not really paid attention to the deity system at all.

“We have new spells,” says one wizard, wearing a red robe and black boots. “I think we will have it this time.”

“I bought the sword from the market,” one fighter says. He is also in chain-mail and lifts a yellow, glowing sword—an enchanted weapon.

This is the group we have been waiting for; funny it is the ones from the forest.

I back up and open my voice chat. “I found our group,” I whisper. “Remember that group from the forest? They are fully geared and ready to go, hopefully they don’t notice us tag along. Are you guys ready?”

“Yep,” says Briar, “I’m ready to follow the dork-party.”

“Are you sure Esme?” Kian ask. Then he adds, “Never mind, I trust you.”

We quickly leap through shadows to get set up next to the entrance ahead of our target group. We wait for another group to enter, and then we get onto the platform, along the edges in the Jenkins crates. Inside is complete darkness.

I see the party come down—they have the excitement of battle, the glow. They are eager and ready to go; the cleric is leading the way swinging his hammer as he walks. The fighters are pulling their weapons out and singing. The mages finger their spell books. These guys are amped.

“Okay, get ready. Let’s hope they don’t notice,” I whisper.

“Ready, check, ready! Everyone ready?” the cleric barks like a drill sergeant.

“Ready!” both fighters shout.

“Ready!” the red mage says, pulling out his spell book.

The other mage gets his spell book out. “Ready!”

“Ready,” I whisper

I get a “ready! Ready,” in response.

The cleric howls, and the fighters and mages join in—he pulls the lever.