Author Frank Morin
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Ch 37 - We Might Actually Need More Monsters
🕑 Added 2024-10-10 19:00:02 +0000 UTCIt turned out dawn took longer to arrive than I’d thought. While the sky very slowly changed from pitch black to gray, we rested and talked.
Nearly half of Burns’s group had picked the Base Camp utility spell, and their huge tents ringed the clearing next to the pond. Jane invited me, William, and Joey into her tent, set next to a large solitary boulder.
Joey pulled me aside just inside the door and gripped my hand with both of his. “Lucas, I have to thank you again. You saved me and William. You gave me new hope. I thought I was a goner and we were all just waiting for our turn to die. Now I believe we have a chance of winning this game and saving Earth!”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I wasn’t prepared for such an intensely emotional response. I’d done what I figured anyone would. I’d been so focused on advancing and leveling and finding a way to win, I hadn’t considered how others might be reacting to the insanity we’d gotten dropped in.
“You’re welcome,” I managed. “Together, we’ve got a chance.”
“Yes! I will follow you all the way to that nymph queen’s lair. If anyone can kill her, it’ll be you.”
“Thanks. Let’s just focus on surviving the first week, eh?”
Grinning, he hurried to take a seat between a couple of the ladies who had just arrived with a few other people, and instantly struck up a conversation with both of them. I followed, a bit overwhelmed by his faith in me. We’d only known each other an hour. How had he developed such a fanatical belief in my abilities?
We had survived an ordeal that by all rights should have claimed all our lives, but he and William had helped with that. My final double-stacked spell strike had been pretty impressive, but I saw that as a huge stroke of luck. I couldn’t replicate the werewolf transformation or that unique spell combination. I guess I’d better come up with a new combo, then. People were counting on me.
Burns joined us, along with a couple other leaders of their group. They had cobbled together the large group from members of 6 teams and were doing pretty well so far. With the larger group, they lost fewer people to the random monster attacks, but faced a problem I had already noticed.
“Experience sharing is weird,” Burns said as we all lounged in comfortable chairs or the couch. “Everyone gets some experience from every kill, but those of us who do the actual fighting get a larger percentage.”
“Have you been able to quantify it?” I was very interested in the topic. I’d lost a ton of experience fighting the cow herd to the rest of the group. I needed up to 10 times as much as anyone else to level up, so the topic was literally life and death for me.
Burns paused to take another bite of breakfast. Jane had not used her oven last night, and with some of the steaks I’d gotten from the cows, it produced piles of fantastic breakfast burritos. We were all gorging ourselves on them.
“Not totally,” said Hector Rodriguez, a member of Burns’s team. He was an olive-skilled older gentleman from Argentina, tall and trim, with a beautiful paired longsword and dagger at his hips. He’d been one of the sword master consultants for the movie and looked more comfortable than most in our new world.
They’d ended up on the Pirates of the Caribbean team, of course. How could they not when Burns’s name was William Turner? I assumed Hector filled the role of Captain Hector Barbossa. He didn’t look or act like the pirate, but did have an authentic, wide-brimmed replica hat.
Burns swallowed a big chunk of burrito, then said, “From what we can tell, the person who makes the kill gets a larger percentage, but everyone involved in the fighting gets a decent slice. Even if you’re carrying a weapon, you get more than those who stay back in purely support roles.”
“So everyone carries a weapon during a monster attack?” Joey asked, then winked at a pretty tall blonde in a maroon dress. She was one of the archers in the group, named Susan.
She hadn’t spoken much yet, which was too bad. Her smooth British accent was amazing. She did say how thrilled she was to end up on Team Narnia, and she seemed friendly.
Jane chuckled before Burns could respond. “We’ve been arguing about that since yesterday morning.”
“Why?” William asked.
Burns sat back and scanned the group, expression serious. “Our group is getting pretty big, and when we meet up with the other survivors, our numbers will swell. That’s great for making a secure base camp for defense and security purposes, but it is not good for leveling.”
“And we need to level,” Hector added, fingers of one hand tapping on the hilt of his sword.
I said, “Let me guess, when you’re fighting a few monsters at a time, or even a decent-sized pack, no one gets enough experience to level very fast.”
“Exactly,” Burns said. “Those of us with higher levels generally won them before we joined the larger group. Now we’re struggling to bring in enough experience to keep everyone leveling at the same speed.”
Susan leaned forward in her chair. “We’re facing choices none of us expected. Should we tell support folks, especially those who have reached level 10, to stay back and not draw weapons so we can focus the experience on the fighters?”
“Or do we even send smaller teams away to hunt and level up faster?” Hector added.
“So what happens to the support folks? How do they level?” William asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Burns asked, not hiding his frustration. “I suspect at some point we’ll see new avenues for non-fighters to level better, but those are not open to us yet.”
Jane said, “So either we let non-fighters fall behind, which might be as good as a death sentence in a few days, even if they reach the second stage.”
“Or do our fighters level slower and lack the strength to deal with the monsters on the next stage?” Burns finished.
It was a tough question. Joey sat back in his chair and blew out a breath. “We’ve seen a glimpse of the next stage. Werewolves and zombies, with levels up into the 30s and 40s.”
“And that alpha has to be over level 50. I sensed he was way tougher. That one monster will likely prove deadlier than most of the rest of he pack combined.”
“How do you know that?” Hector asked.
“Like Joey said, we survived the second stage. I felt the alpha’s aura, and it was terrifying. If it had come down after us, we could not have escaped.”
Burns sighed. “We can’t deal with that level of threat yet. Not even close. And if we keep leveling at the rate we’re going now, we’ll get everyone up there just to give the werewolves a feast.”
“There has to be a way,” Susan insisted.
Burns nodded. “I know. We just haven’t found it yet.”
I had already realized I was going to need to hunt alone. I’d gained 4 precious levels in a single night up on the second stage fighting much higher-leveled monsters, but I’d nearly died multiple times too. That stage was terrifying, and no one was ready to go up there. Could we get strong enough in the few days we had left? It would be a tough challenge.
Now I was back in the relatively safer first stage, but with weaker monsters came much slower experience growth. I was going to have to bust my tail every waking moment in order to scrounge together enough experience to reach level 10 in time.
I hadn’t considered the challenge for everyone else. It might not be as severe as the one I faced, but was fundamentally the same. There were roughly 700 survivors left. We needed to get them all together, but also make sure they all reached the minimum level.
We hadn’t seen many big herds, and even if we fought a herd of 700 monsters, if that experience got divided among all of us, that would equate to 1 monster kill each. Not nearly enough for leveling.
The sheer logistics of so many people and so many monsters seemed overwhelming. I’d thought the constant flood of monsters cruel, but honestly, we needed those monsters, despite the danger they represented, if we wanted any chance of surviving the higher stages.
I hoped Burns was right and Cyrus opened up new ways to level. From what I was seeing, most people were at or near level 10, with forerunners like Burns and Tony pushing into the low 20s. That meant most people could make it up to the second stage, but not survive there. We needed a plan to deal with the much stronger monsters, or hundreds of us could get slaughtered before we got strong enough to defend ourselves.
“Delicious,” Burns sighed, then tossed his empty plate into the air. It vanished, just like our plates had in Ruby’s tent the first night.
I finally had enough peace to think about my team. I’d been running non-stop pretty much since the mammoth lion kidnapped me. Now I opened my team menu and saw a dozen messages from Ruby and 4 more from Steve.
Most simply begged me to tell them where I was and how I was doing. That made me feel guilty. I’d totally forgotten about the team chat feature. I could have found time to send a quick text.
The last one from Ruby was more interesting. “Lucas, where are you? I hope you’re doing okay. We’re still with Tony’s team. We’ve found a great base location in the big valley that should work as a town for everyone. It’s a raised hill with rocks around the edges that form the start of a defensive wall. We’ve gathered here with about 200 people so far.”
I sent a quick response to both her and Steve, apologizing for not communicating sooner. I quickly summarized my crazy experiences over the past day and night, told them I’d connected with over 20 more people, and we’d head in their direction at first light.
Then I held up my hand to interrupt Hector and another woman whose name I hadn’t caught yet. She was dressed like a medieval merchant and apparently represented the interests of the non-combat folks who were trying to focus on crafting or other support roles.
“Hey, I finally checked with my team and I got news.” I shared what Ruby had said in her last message.
“Good. That confirms we’re on the right track,” Burns said.
“But it will exacerbate our problem,” Hector added.
“Indeed. Once we reach the town, we’ll meet in council with the other leaders and —“
Burns was interrupted as a heavyset woman burst into the tent shouting, “Monsters!”
