Assassinate Wonderwind [Book 1 Completed!]

“This is the last place I’d like to bring mythic items to…”

Veyra looked absolutely perfect in her new boots. They were a gray-ish white with black laces, fit for a winter adventure. Each step she took left a small trail of frost. Items in Wonderwind usually hinted at their powers by their appearance, letting opponents better guess the traits of their opponents. Veyra’s boots would give away that she was a frost mage, but the effect was quite subtle for a mythic item.

“I thought you liked poison areas,” I said. “Mythic boots should protect you from swamps, at least.”

“Not if they’re this disgusting.”

Necromantic energy dripped into puddles on the brick path, giving the tunnel-like sewers a nice but creepy ambiance. A quiet sizzling came from the middle, where sewage was getting corroded by the shiny acidic liquid. The strong smell of cleaning chemicals made Veyra wrinkle her nose. Not a pleasant scent, but at least the smell of sewage was mostly blocked. The combination of smells reminded me of a sweaty changing room in elementary school PE class after the weird kid chased everyone with a bottle of spray deodorant.

“We’ll get ambushed soon,” Veyra said. “If the smells are this bad, there are monsters one hundred percent of the time.”

“Perfect time for testing items, no?” I tried spinning my new sickle again, finding it awkward at best. Veyra watched from the side, unimpressed. I definitely needed to practice some tricks with this damn thing.

“Are you really not anxious at all?” she asked. “We’ve got millions worth of items equipped. No defensive items, though. Any monsters here could still one-shot us.”

“Well, I checked Zenith Protocol’s stream earlier,” I said. “They’re not even close to the castle. The only player who might assassinate us is Dragrath, and I doubt he’s in the city either. If we die to monsters, we can just return to retrieve whatever drops.”

“I guess,” she said, though definitely wasn’t reassured.

Gear anxiety was a real thing in Wonderwind. Equipping anything valuable always attracted assassins. A lot of players never equipped their main set when they explored new dungeons for the first time. Only when they knew what monster types they were up against were they willing to risk anything valuable.

True front runners never did that. Zenith Protocol walked in with their best gear, and if they died, they went back in to recover what was lost.

“Our goal is to find Quisel first and foremost,” Veyra reminded. “If we get ambushed, we play for survival. Our builds aren’t overpowered yet. We still need good strategies.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’re not fighting bosses heads on with—”

I turned the corner and immediately raised The Immortal to block the flash of light that came in my direction.

I should have dashed instead. The impact sent me flying over the intersection, crashing against the corner of the stone. My vision flickered black, and a few seconds passed in a dizzying blur. System notifications woke me up.

[Oblique Transcendence - Blood Desperation Active Conditions Met]

[Straight Attacks Are 100% More Effective When Under 40% Health]

Next thing I knew, I dipped into a portal and appeared next to Veyra. I blinked, then groaned and pushed myself up. I reached for a health potion.

The figure of whoever had just hit me turned the corner. It was a wretched humanoid creature with thin arms, even scrawnier than the NPCs above. Its eyes were fully green, necromantic energy dripping from its limbs. While stepping toward us, it dipped its rusty sword into the sewage. Its nametag read, Ghoul Of The Summoner (Level 413).

With a violent swing, the ghoul lifted the blade from the sewage, splashing the liquid at us. Veyra blocked with [Elemental Barrier]. Liquid splashed, then sizzled as the corrosive energy drilled a hole through the barrier. Luckily, the process was slow enough that the liquid fell to the ground, nearly splashing to our boots.

We slowly moved back. “Is it alone?” Veyra asked.

We both had our weapons ready, despite agreeing to run if things got bad earlier. The ghoul was over level four hundred, but if its attack patterns were simple, it could be the perfect target.

The ghoul’s balance wavered and its steps landed on twisted feet, making its stride unpredictable and monster-like, yet it moved much quicker than the usual zombies. I was fairly sure it could still move faster. It followed us carefully, almost like a trained fighter looking for a safe opportunity to attack.

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We backed off for at least twenty feet, but no more monsters followed behind it. I held my ground. “I’d say we can fight it.”

“Yeah, the same strategy from the portal mage’s crypt?” she asked.

“Sure, but I’ll try to land hits as well this time.”

She nodded, and the ghoul lunged for me. I dodged the first attack, fearing that I didn’t have enough defence for my blocks to reliably defend.

Just like its gait, the ghoul’s stance with the sword was an odd thing to behold. Its rusted sword dragged behind, only to launch into a swing with incredible power akin to Annath’s runesword when fully buffed by [Sword Dance]. I kept my distance and dodged to gain a feel for what the ghoul could and couldn’t do.

Dodging gave me an excuse to witness Veyra’s new boots in action. She fired a simple icicle at the ghoul’s head, which inflicted [Heaven’s Taint]. Glimmering frost particles clung to the ghoul’s skin and its movements slowed considerably.

She switched the active mode of her boots to [Frozen Heaven], and the color of her boots turned black, the laces switching to ice-blue. She said, “Hug me or dash!” and began casting [Time Freeze]. Its long cooldown activated [Bloom], the effect of Blooming Magenta, giving her eyes a slight magenta glow as her elemental resistances were increased by 500.

I kept the ghoul aggroed on me until the last second, when I dashed to hug Veyra. Her fully charged [Time Freeze] blew up, and the sewers were engulfed in frost, little snowflakes clinging to the bricks all around the tunnel.

The ghoul cracked with a violent burst of AoE frost, tinted purple from dark magic. The bricks under its feet suffered cracks. Tainted frost spread all around its footing. Its health bar dropped to 86%, and [Torment] burned it to 85%.

“Oh my,” I said. “You’re actually doing damage.”

She had a subtle grin on her face. “I might do more with my quick-casting robe now.”

“Do the boots have a cooldown?”

As a test, she switched the mode of her boots back to [Tainted Heaven] to apply another taint. She shot an icicle, landing it on the ghoul’s chest. Sure enough, its movements slowed down again as [Heaven’s Taint] was applied.

“No cooldown,” Veyra said.

“Huge,” I said. “My turn now. Keep it slowed.”

Veyra stood nearby without attacking. I approached the ghoul, ready to start stacking [Evisceration].

Even with its movements slowed, dodging required a lot of focus simply due to the unpredictability of its attacks. I stayed at the edge of its range for the first few exchanges. No matter how unpredictable the ghoul’s attacks were, they still had to follow physics. If it missed a heavy blow, it required time to heft its sword for another attack.

An overhead blow landed next to my feet, missing by an inch, and I slashed at its throat with my sickle. I landed a clean cut, making it growl.

I left what would have been a fatal wound on a human, but the critical strike only dealt 1% damage, giving me a single stack of evisceration. Dark particles rose from its shoulders as the sickle left [Haunt], though the extra damage was barely noticeable.

I kept dueling the ghoul. As I got into rhythm, it got easier and easier to land blows. With each attack, [Haunt] did slightly more damage, though my DPS was still way lower than just one of Veyra’s combos.

My base damage just isn’t high enough or what? I thought.

With fifteen evisceration stacks, I slashed at its throat once again for a heavier crit.

Finally, its health bar moved, dropping to 59%. The ghoul stumbled backward, barely staying afoot. [Haunt]’s health drain grew to a full-on burn, sucking life out of its shoulders. Its health steadily fell by a percentage every second.

I moved back to Veyra with a doubtful expression. “I don’t know. It feels strong, but definitely not overpowered.”

“That’s a level four hundred monster,” Veyra said. “You’re doing damage to it. In PvP, that sickle will dominate.”

“True, I guess,” was all I could say. Maybe I’d been spoiled lately with all the overpowered builds we’d somehow fitted together.

For the remaining fight, we stopped playing with it and gave it our all. Veyra’s DPS was incredible as she switched between the two modes of her boots, exploding frost over and over again. She cast [Chronorift] under its feet, then began spamming the boots’ effect to repeatedly proc the effect both ways.

That wasn’t as powerful as I would have assumed, since the individual spikes of [Chronorift] didn’t do that much damage, and only one of them received the full resistance penetrating effect of [Frozen Heaven]. The boots were the most powerful with spells that did heavy damage at once. Veyra’s only spell like that was [Time Freeze], and that had a long cooldown.

I kept slashing at the ghoul as well, intending to finish it off with [Eviscerate] when it got low. At 15% health, though, I landed a crit, and something odd happened.

Its eyes turned black, and [Haunt]’s dark particles burned out from its mouth. Its limbs lost power, as if its soul had been sucked from the inside. The ghoul died, collapsing on the ground.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Haunt executes after the bonus damage does enough to kill it. I got a part of its stats. Three hundred defence and four hundred attack power.”

“Honestly,” Veyra said, “you’re already doing insane damage. You could consider re-speccing to a Piercing Strike build for PvP. I’m guessing you’d one-shot a lot of players with that.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’re still squishy, though. I’ll get one-shotted as well. That’s not good if we’re running mythic items to guild-wipes.”

She couldn’t disagree.

For now, we continued clearing the sewers. We encountered more ghouls wielding different weapons. Fighting two at a time turned out to be doable, especially after one of them died and I got the stats buff, but we didn’t risk fighting three at a time.

Overall, our builds just felt… balanced. We didn’t need to cheese monsters to kill them anymore, but we didn’t truly dominate anything either, at least not when our enemies were above level four hundred. A mistake would still kill us, and we needed to approach intersections carefully.

But it wasn’t like we’d never fought monsters fairly before. It reminded me of clearing the Portal Mage’s Crypt when Veyra and I had just met. If anything, the sewers here were easier. We explored further while our experience bars steadily rose.

An hour later, we finally came across the coughing, disheveled man we’d been looking for, who leaned against the wall with a booze bottle in hand, looking like he was just about to die.

Quisel (NPC, Bondsmith, Level ???).