CHAPTER FIFTEEN: WOLF PACK AND THE DRAUGR SHOP QUARTET

The party of four approached Gabriel. They were a tight knit group that were childhood friends outside of VR. The party were a group of semi-pro gamers who decided to officially become professional gamers with the release of Deliverance Online.

The party of four's group was called [WOLF-PACK]. In Gabriel's past life they were a rival mercenary group that would compete with Gabriel for contracts to some of the Super guilds. Individually they weren't the top-of-the-line gamers, but as a unit, they could perform just as well as some of the parties in the Super guilds.

When Gabriel was just starting out as a mercenary and making a name for himself, he was in dire need of money and was looking to get a contract to scout out some ancient ruins for one of the Super guilds called {Eden}.

He lost the contract to the group [Wolf Pack] and in his anger decided to assassinate the female mage in the group when she was alone.

When a player dies in Deliverance online, they have a 25% chance of dropping one of their equipped items and can't log in for 12 hours (RT).

The female mage [Phat-Cat] dropped one of her Unique class items the [Staff of RA] when Gabriel assassinated her. Gabriel then put it up for auction and sold it before [Phat-Cat] could try to get it back. When [Phat-Cat] PM Gabriel to ask for him to return the staff, he convinced her to meet him in an area devoid of people and assassinated [Phat-Cat] again.

After Gabriel's actions they were like fire and water from then on out.

Gabriel looked at the party that was approaching him now and felt guilty from his previous actions. Gabriel thought that maybe this was God telling him to make up for it now.

"Hey Buddy! Sorry to disturb you, we are not trying to get in your way here. We just wanted to congratulate you on the achievement and say that was amazing" Said [Rex].

[Rex] was the oldest out of the group and big brother to [T]. [Rex] was a straight forward guy. With an older brother personality which was stern at times but in a caring way. He was always looking out for the party, who he referred to as his family.

Next came his little brother [T} who was a goof ball like Gabriel and a huge Otaku, he was always getting himself into trouble with his mouth. He chased after almost every woman he came into contact with but always seemed to scare them off.

The Skinny Dwarf behind them was a guy by the name of [Mouse], he went by that name out of VR too. Mouse was an orphan who lived with his Grandma, she lived on the same street as the other three in the party. Mouse used to get taken advantage of a lot in the past because of his border-line childlike personality and his trusting nature.

Mouse was famous in Gabriel's past life too with the nickname [Lucky Hand], you were almost guarantee a [Rare] drop if he looted a corpse or chest. Some parties and guilds in the past use to befriend him just so he could loot for them and the moment they got the loot they would boot him out of the party.

When the [Wolf-Pack] was around, they would never let anyone take advantage of him. [Mouse] ended up spending a lot more time on D.O. than the rest of the party as he had no family or other friends, so he was always trying to make new ones in D.O. It led to a lot of people taking advantage of him.

Gabriel even remembered that he used Mouse and his lucky hands before as well. After booting Mouse out of the party like everyone else would do. Gabriel found Mouse sitting in the same spot he left him at, Mouse had been crying for half a day by then. It still gave an ache to Gabriel's heart with the mere thought of that moment.

Last but not least of the group was [Phat Cat]. She was a gorgeous girl and used to get a lot of attention from the male players back in the day. She also had a very sweet, girl next door personality. She lived next to the brothers and met Mouse when he moved into his Grandmother's house. [Phat Cat] would go over to check on the lonely old lady whenever she had time.

Everyone loved [Phat Cat] but they also knew not to push the limit because she was ruthless to people that she felt had betrayed her. [Phat Cat]'s father abandoned her mother when she was only 4 years old and ever since then she was ruthless to people she thought betrayed her trust, especially men.

"Hey guys! That's alright, you're not bothering me but I will have to apologize as I think I killed every Draugr here. If you want to do some grinding you will have to come back when they respawn in an hour" Gabriel said to the party with a friendly smile.

[Phat Cat] didn't know why but when she saw this strangers smile, her voice was stuck in her throat. She looked Gabriel up and down. Taking his measure, he was quite a tall guy, easily over 6 foot. Gabriel had bronze coloured armour on, which left his arms bare.

She had to admit as well that Gabriel had 'juicily thick arms'. He had a ruggedly handsome face, with a strong jaw. A Viking style platted beard and hair, he looked like a rugged outdoorsman.

'Her favourite' [Phat Cat] thought. This made her pause, ever since her father left whens he was young. It became harder and harder to trust men but with this man it felt different. It felt as if she knew him already. [Phat Cat] just realized that everyone was looking at her and her face turned bright red. Lost in her train of thoughts she realized that the men had all introduced themselves and now Gabriel was sticking his hand out to her in a handshake.

[Phat Cat] panicked and grabbed his hand with both of hers and just held it. Taking Gabriel by surprise. He didn't know what to do so he just held his hand in hers and didn't retract it. Gabriel was also busy musing to himself 'By Billy-goat-Jesus her hands are so soft and smooth, like holding clouds, does she dip them in milk every night or what!?'

[Phat Cat] realized that neither of them were saying anything and they were just holding each other's hands. [Phat Cat] pulled her hand back quickly and felt like her face was getting so hot it could melt.

"Ahem... yes... well... My name is Osiris, what is yours?" Gabriel cleared his throat to try to clear the awkward air.

"My name is [Phat cat]. It is a pleasure to meet you too. We were admiring your movements. You seemed so natural out there like you have fought thousands of battles. When your sword broke, I thought this was it but you just used your bare hands to decimate the rest. You're lovely to watch.... ah.... I mean the Battle was lovely to watch!" [Phat Cat] ended the last part in a yell to cover up her saying that Gabriel was 'lovely'.

Gabriel schooled his features into a casual smile like he hadn't heard anything. Even though inside, he was doing a little tap dance from the compliment. Who wasn't vulnerable to compliments? Especially Gabriel, as he spent the later years mostly alone.

"Thank you for the compliment [Phat Cat], much appreciated. I feel bad now, you guys are here and there is nothing for you to grind. How about this! I have a special quest to kill the [Draugr Barber] Boss here. I have to fight him alone per the conditions but he has four elite bodyguards we can take down together and they should have some decent drops and give you guys plenty of EXP. What do you think?" Gabriel offered.

Gabriel did this for two reasons, he wanted to befriend these guys as they would be super useful in the future and they were the trustworthy sort, also he did want to use Mouse's lucky hands to hopefully pick some [uncommon or Rare] drops from the Elites. Gabriel shot them an invite to form a party. [Rex] looked at the other three and got a nod from each.

"Sure we would! Thanks for the offer" [Rex] said.

Gabriel got some notifications.

[T – LVL 6 – Warrior has joined your party]

[Rex –LVL 6 – Paladin has joined your party]

[Mouse – LVL 6 – Combat engineer has joined your party]

[Phat Cat – LVL 6 – Mage has joined your party]

They all had their classes already which showed that they were quite skilled. [T] was a generic Warrior, they were quite balanced in terms of defence and DPS. [Rex] was a paladin which was good tank class, they have several crowd-control skills and one healing spell at this point.

Mouse was a combat engineer, where if played with a good team that can keep the enemies away from him, he can set up some really nasty weapons like a ballista or traps. It was a class that was very useful for large wars or Bosses with lots of health.

At Mouse's level though he would only have the ability to make [Frost mines] which could slow down movement speed and [Penetrating shot} for his crossbow. Which by Gabriel's inspection looked like a [Rare} drop, showing Mouse's skill with his lucky hands.

[Phat Cat] was a generic mage, which had a couple of spells at this point. Gabriel recalled that it should be [Mana bullet] it fired a condensed mana bullet, that did 10-15 DMG +INT LVL. The other spell was [Mana Sheild] which gave a shield over yourself or an ally made of mana, that could take up to 25 DMG at LVL 1.

Before a mage specialized in an element or did there second-class upgrade, there wasn't many skills they could use.

"Let's head off then. I can't share the quest with you because it is a [Personal] one but I will explain the Elites to you. The reason I chose to fight so many Draugr was because I needed to get six of the Keys to the crypt for this boss. Most of the crypts around here only need one key to open their entrance but I needed six and not all Draugr will drop one." Gabriel continued to explain as the party made their way to the crypt.

"The Crypt we are going to is for a Boss called [Draugr Barber of Demon street]. It only has two rooms, the first one has four LVL 6 mini-bosses called [Barber shop quartet]. You can't kite these guys as they all fight together and they share a HP pool. They are not too hard to fight. They are all [Warrior Bards] just with different weapons. They have two annoying skills, one is [Quick Step] which increase their movement and attack speed by 50%. The other is [Smooth Tunes] which will hypnotize one of us at random and make us stunned for 30 seconds."

"There is a simple trick to remove this effect and the moment one of us is affected, yell out, and one of us just needs to DMG you to remove the debuff. I recommend Rex and T to take on one enemy each and just focus on defense, don't stress to much about getting a heap of DMG as it will add up all together. If Mouse could Keep throwing down [Frost Mines] to counter their increased movement speed. Sounds good? Let me know if you have any questions and issues" Gabriel asked after finishing his explanation.

The rest of the party just looked at Gabriel agape; due to the breath of his knowledge. None of them replied to Gabriel for a couple of seconds before [Rex] finally spoke up.

"Sounds goods [Osiris]. We are fine to let you lead this one, we are a tight-knit group but I think it's safe to say we are all happy to follow your commands for this one".

The other three all nodded in agreement and Gabriel smiled back. Gabriel was happy that they trusted him so easily, which also gave him a slight sense of unease. Gabriel never really led a party, he played mainly solo and lead NPC armies in some of the wars but that was it. Gabriel shook off his unease and moved on, knowing it will be fine. He was confident in his skills.

The party shortly arrived at The Demon Barber's crypt and Gabriel used six keys to unlock the gate. Gabriel opened the gate which was accompanied with a bell like sound of 'Ding-Ding' like when you walk into a convenience store.

They walked down a short flight of stairs and entered into an empty square room. In the middle of the room stoof four Draugr in a line shoulder to shoulder, they were wearing cotton stripped shirt and pants with a flat bowler hat on their heads.

Each one had a different weapon, one had a short spear, one had a sword with a buckler, one had a Double headed axe and one had a one-handed hammer with a matching Kite-shield.

Gabriel used INSPECT on the four Elites.

[Draugr Shop Quartet - (Elite) - LVL 6 - (Hostile)]

HP – 4000/4000 - Shared HP pool

Need higher LVL for further information

"Everyone ready? Lets start" Gabriel made eye-contact with the rest of the party and started to move forward, while taking out his axe from his belt. Gabriel took on two Elites by himself, one with the short spear and the other with a Sword and Buckler.

While [T] and [Rex] took on one each. Mouse got busy throwing out some [Frozen mines] and [Phat Cat] was waiting for the three boys to take gain agro before she started to attack.

Gabriel quickly drank a [Minor Fury Potion] to increase his damage output before heading in. Gabriel first ran over to the side of the Draugr with the sword and put him between the one with the spear. Gabriel went in with a chop to the side of the Draugr's sword arm, trying to inflict the cripple status but he narrowly missed the joint.

Gabriel quickly averted his head to the side, as the Draugr with the spear aimed a thrust at Gabriel's head over the other one's shoulder. Gabriel used this opportunity to pull the spear forwards making the one behind slam into the one in front. Skillfully inflicting them both with a stunned status of two seconds.

Gabriel capitalized on the moment with two quick overhanded hacks of his axe into the shoulder joint of the Draugr holding the sword, forcing it to get a { -100 DMG – crippled right arm} above its head.

The Draugr now only had one arm in play which had a buckler strapped to it. Making him not much of a threat.

As Gabriel went to town on the one armed Draugr who couldn't defend himself, the Draugr with the spear tried attacking him. Gabriel dodged thrusts and jumped over low sweeps of the spear. Gabriel dealt some serious damage to the one missing the arm in between dodging the spear attacks. As the Draugr had shared HP, Gabriel only needed to keep attacking one to kill them all.

[-65]

[-82]

[-71]

The Barber Shop Quartet tried to use the skill [Quick step] but it was negated with Mouse's mines.

So far only [Phat Cat] was hypnotized twice and Mouse did some minor DMG to knock her out of the effect. [T] and [Rex] were doing great on their own, mainly focusing on dodging and defending as per Gabriel's instructions.

The party fought on for the next 25 minutes until finally they all got the same notification, accompanied with the Draugr all lining back up shoulder to shoulder again before giving a bow to the party with their hats off. The Draugr then fell back in-synch like logs.

[Congratulations!!! Slayed - Draugr Shop Quartet – LVL 6 - HP 0/4000 - EXP 4000 – Party share ON – EXP earned - 800 each]