3 Summoning the Party

After some careful thought, Zhang Yun realized that the best way to ensure his own safety was to summon a party.

At the end of the day, he would need to grow in power in order to fight off monsters. Still a stranger to this world and its rules, if he entered combat blindly, it would likely end in tragedy. Rather than gaining those levels he needed, he might only end up losing a great many items.

But if he had a Party to face the peril for him… win or lose, he'd still gain vital intel on his foes.

If the danger was too great, he'd abandon the party and flee.

If the threat was minor, he'd command the party to beat the enemies most of the way to death, then he'd swoop in to reap the XP for himself.

After all, common-tier Party members could be revived without expending precious Resurrection Tokens—he'd only need basic materials, which he could get for free by logging into the game each day.

In other words, their lives were inconsequential, and their deaths would cause him neither financial loss nor emotional distress.

Well then… Which heroes to summon?

Four- or five-star Heroes were off the table—those would feed on his Diamonds. He would only choose from amongst three-star Heroes or lesser.

Utility-type Heroes were no good, either: Those were generally worthless in combat—and until he learned more about this world, the value of their specific abilities would remain uncertain. Summoning them now would only be a needless waste of resources.

Once he had a better idea of how things worked, he'd be able to summon specific Heroes for specific purposes, thereby getting maximum value out of them.

That left the Combat-type Heroes. First, leave out the ones that required a Summoning Scroll, because if he accidentally random-rolled a powerful Hero, all his plans would go up in smoke.

That made things simple, then: His best option right now was the Calling Cards he'd received for free, which he'd been keeping in Storage. Calling Cards were special items awarded for completing Quests or participating in Events, and each one summoned a specific lower-tier Hero, at your discretion.

Not especially powerful, they generally weren't worth summoning, so Zhang Yun had been treating them as mere collectibles all this while, just collecting dust in a corner of his Storage.

He'd never expected that one day they might be exactly what he needed.

Browsing through the inventory, he found that he actually had quite a number of Calling Cards squirrelled away, running across a vast range of Races and Elements. There were tribal warriors with tremendous potential, and rare cards which could summon lower-tier versions of five-star Heroes.

Deep in thought, he muttered, "It's a beach, next to the water. Could be the coastline of a vast continent; could just be an island. Continent would be better: If I skirt around the edge of this jungle, I'll eventually come across the natives of this world; if this is a deserted island, I'll have to find a way to travel across the ocean, and find a resource-rich land.

"If it comes to that, a fast-swimming aquatic creature would be most useful, although a flyer capable of long-distance travel would be almost as good. Either way, it would have to be something big, so I don't get swept away if we run into stormy seas. Gotta be pretty strong, too—enough to get us past most ocean creatures…"

God damn!

There were plenty of Heroes who fulfilled these conditions—and all of them required a toss of the dice. He didn't seem to have any swimmers on his Calling Cards… and even if there were any, they'd just be small aquatic creatures, incapable of bearing a passenger anywhere.

As for flyers, nothing he had was big enough to carry anyone aloft—for that matter, it was doubtful that they themselves could make it across to other landmasses.

"Well, this is embarrassing…" Zhang Yun muttered. After a pause, he remarked, "Never mind, no hurry. It's unlikely this is actually a deserted island, so it's not like I'll definitely need some form of naval transport. First, let's see what's behind those trees… if I'm on an island after all, then I'll start working on a plan."

He flipped through the Calling Cards he had, thought hard for a moment more, then selected what seemed to be the best fit for the present circumstances.

"Summon Tidal Murloc!"

***

Name: Tidal Murloc

Race: Murloc

Legacy: N/A

Class: Warrior

Title: N/A

Level: 1

Experience Points (XP): 0

Health Points (HP): 100/100

Stamina Points (SP): 50/50

Attributes: STR 5, AGI 6, CON 5, INT 1, WILL 0, CHA 0

Unassigned Attribute Points: 0

Skills: Symbiosis (Lv1: Upon death, symbiotic parasites take control of the body to continue fighting. All Attributes reduced by 50%; dying in this condition will be permanent; if not engaged in combat, the body can remain animated for up to five minutes, after which it falls.)

Equipment: Rusted Scimitar (ATK +5)

Summoner: Zhang Yun

Affiliation: Tidal Kingdom

Overall Rating: * (out of three stars)

[Summary: A foot soldier of the Tidal Kingdom, able to do battle in the water as well as on land. More agile when underwater. Sentient race, but not much growth potential.]

***

Basically low-level cannon fodder. An amphibious, versatile combatant. He'd use it to scout the jungle for now; if an ocean crossing later proved to be necessary, they could also screen for him as frigates of a sort.

If needed, he could summon other Murlocs so they could all benefit from tribal bonuses to their Attributes and combat abilities. The problem was that he didn't have the other Murloc types as Calling Cards—he'd have to draw those from the 'Amphibious Kingdom: Tidal Pool' set.

As for the Murloc's 'Symbiosis' ability… he himself had never made use of it before, but he'd seen it at the hands of other players who specialized in Murlocs. They were generally used to bait out attacks from Skill-intensive Bosses, absorbing two damaging Skills apiece.

Versus Attack-focused Bosses, they could also serve as meat shields, keeping the simple-minded Boss monsters pre-occupied in order to buy time for ranged attackers to deal out their damage.

Murlocs had other useful Skills as well, but those were only unlocked at higher levels, or if one expended the resources to improve their Star Rating.

Overall, these were great to use during the early levels. At higher levels, they could either be let go of, or kept around for menial labor—after all, they hardly cost anything to keep around, so that having a dozen on hand was a trivial matter.

As such, Zhang Yun summoned ten of them at once, to serve as his forward scouts in this unfamiliar new world.

"You, you, and you… the three of you, team up and go take a look around that stretch of the woods."

"You, you, and you… the three of you, run along this beach for a bit, find out if we're on an island or not."

"That leaves the four of you… Go swim around in the sea for a bit, catch a few fish for me, and check if there are any dangerous creatures in the area."

As they appeared, Zhang Yun commanded them deftly, just as he had when he'd first started playing this game. The intelligent Murlocs were very obedient. Scimitars whirling in their hands, they headed towards the locations he'd indicated.

"Not bad. They're rather well-behaved. I can see why people like using them as meat shields to draw aggro."

Feeling good about things, he returned to his Storage vault for another look around, deciding to take careful stock of what he had in there. After all, this was the ultimate treasure hoard, accumulated over ten years. The items contained within were beyond counting, so it was entirely possible he'd come across some things here and there that he'd forgotten about.

So he'd take a look around right now, see if he came across anything like that. He looked forward to a pleasant surprise or two…

However, before he could get started on that in earnest, the trio of Murlocs he'd sent into the jungle suddenly came under attack…

[Warning! Tidal Murlocs under attack! Battle has been joined!]

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