Chapter 15: Flesh dance
*BANG!*
"Scums! They dare?!"
Right now we are inside the head keeper's room. As we showed him the clues and told him what happened inside the forest; he was enraged. Aunt Lanavi's face also looked bad, she might start crying later.
"Child, thank you for finding out all these. The book that you brought has instructions on how to extract a living creature's blood and making ritual core with it without losing the potency of the blood. It is an extremely disgusting topic which harms and mutates all living beings into monstrosities. These monsters are also unstable, they can only exist up until ten to twenty hours starting from their creation. They can not handle the potency of the blood infused in them due to their own physical and spiritual body not being strong enough. When the vessel is weak, adding more energy into it will only cause it to break.
The book also has techniques to prolong the lifespan of these creatures and ways to time their death. But when they die, they cause explosions, unless being defeated by taking away their vitality. The torn apart clothes belong to a keeper, but I can not say whom it belonged to. As for the altar, it creates a bridge between our world and an unholy banished world. They probably gave the blood to gain something from that place; it can be knowledge, some powerful item or an existence.
But the scale of this blood infusion was spread too high, the source might have the ability to contaminate anything nearby it. I can no longer say what the three keepers' fate will be now. It is possible that they might have been sacrifice; worse even, if they have been converted into these bloody things."
"Are the keepers not immune to such atrocities due to nature's blessing?"
"They are indeed, but only when nature exists by them. That place seemed to not have much natural aura, but an overwhelming unease is coming from the blood. Some very strong influence might be trying to convert the nature around there into its own domain.
Another thing, after clearing the dried blood from the altar, we found a kind of symbolic chart inscribed in it. It looked like a figure, but we can't say for sure; we are not too familiar with this kind of blasphemous beings."
"So, what now sir?"
"What else? Cleanse the filth from the world! We will attack that place and erase whatever tried to harm nature. Young ones, will you follow us in restoring nature?"
[Scenario Quest update: Nature must not be sullied!
Some powerful beings are committing atrocities by harming nature, left alone this can turn into a disaster. Luckily, the grove has taken the responsibility to erase the infidels and restore the glorious and ever compressing nature. Will you join their cause?
Objective: Find the source of the blood contamination and erase it.
Reward: 10,000 EXP, 3G, accessory, contribution, honor
Note: You can not stop once you step forward.]
Seems like this is a zone dedicated quest; looking at just the EXP value of the reward, if this quest is not done, then the city will be under a much bigger threat. Luckily we will also gain assistance from the grove so it won't be an impossible mission.
"Yes sir, please allow us to aid you."
"Great! However your equipments are not enough to fight against strong beings; let me give you something for finding out the clues and continuing to help us to subdue the heretics."
[Quest complete: Narmina's distress
Rewards: 3000 EXP, 2G, Nature's protection(Head), Grove walker's gloves.]
[Nature's protection (Head)
Quality: Hard
GS: 40
Level req: 4
Durability: 100/100
P.DEF: 400
M.DEF: 650
S.DEF: 230
Buff: Grants additional 20% heal and protects from contamination.]
[Grove walker's gloves
Quality: Hard
GS: 40
Level req: 4
Durability: 100/100
P.DEF: 250
M.DEF: 250
S.DEF: 430
Buff: Grants natural damage of 5% on every attack to contaminated targets.]
"Go and prepare for the fight, then meet us at the cottage.*
Coming out from the grove, we went to the weaponsmith to get a new weapon, this time I got a stainless steel spear that has a base attack of 40, with an additional damage of 5%. This cost me 2 gold coins. The twins also got new weapons since we are expecting some strong enemies this time. We didn't have to use the potions before, thus all those resources are still kept in our inventory. Also, we repaired our gears and I took some time to get to the library to learn analogy myself, this skill will always come in handy. Sometime later, we went back to the cottage inside the forest.
On the way we saw more parts of the forest contaminated, seems like its spreading fast. As we came near the cottage, we saw 30 grove walkers, 20 keepers along with the head keeper himself waiting for us there.
"Since you are here, we can know begin pressing inside the forest. I have already placed several more of the keepers in the vicinity to support us and keep the contamination from spreading; they are also trying to find a cure, but once we erase the source the forest should slowly return back to nature. Let's move."
The party started moving towards the center of the forest, we came to see more of the tree abominations, even some mutated animals were there. But the walkers cleared them all the same, we were just counting our EXP points.
After a while, we reached our destination. What we saw made us feel sickened and disgusted. There were no trees in this place; it's totally barren land, at the center of which a big building like structure was made. The catch is that the structure is not made of wood or stone, it is made by flesh!
Flesh of countless beings were placed on top of the other flesh and was solidified by blood. It looked gruesome and horrendous! How many beings were killed for someone to create such a blasphemous place? What's more eerie about this place was that nothing other than this horrible structure was here.
"Erase this blasphemous thing at this instance!!"
To be honest, half of the team was busy puking out after seeing this structure; while the rest were enraged and used their spells to attack the structure, which did nothing to it. I used my analogy on this.
[Identified: Nascitur Caro
Born from flesh and blood of many living creatures, this is the shrine of the ancient abomination Ulu'grahana; A being wanted by countless star field for it's atrocities of consuming flesh of creatures, creating sculptures from their blood, massacring many civilizations just his crazy research of making the most perfect flesh in existence. No one can locate his adobe due to him being a seedling stage expert, thus he can elude from other powers senses. However, he is banished from the mortal plane by the 21 divas, making him unable to anchor himself in this plane unless called upon by its inhabitants.
Status: Creation stage (90% complete)
Once the shrine is built, Ulu'grahana will be able to come through the shrine and will begin his bloody massacre.]
[Quest update: Nature must not be sullied!>>Prevent the flesh madman's descent!
You have found the cause of the blood contamination; the disaster grade criminal Ulu'grahana who is trying to descent in the planet cause it. now you must stop him or the planet will be forsaken!
Objective: Kill all those who call upon the madman.
Additional objectives: Stop the creation of the structure.
Destroy the structure.
Rewards: EXP, currency, fame, honor, karma.
Failure penalty: Death, 10,000 sin points, wanted by the divas, destruction of the starting planet, unknown.]
Ah crap! This went downhill too fast. This quest upgraded from a zonal scenario quest and got failure penalty now. As long as the penalty won't appear, it's still not too much of a problem; but once this kind of situation comes, if you can not complete the quest; you are fu*ked. A health bar also appeared on the door of the structure, we will probably have to burst that thing to get in that…..thing.
"Nature's believers! Attack that cursed thing!"
At head keeper's order, all members of the party started attacking the door; but the door had too high HP to just blow it up. At this time, above the structure some robed figures appeared.
[Blood cultists
Level: 6
Health: 1500
Nature: Aggressive]
"Awaken the flesh and hasten the process of our lord's arrival! We will stop the infidels!"
{Zonal event notice! A being capable of destroying the world is trying to descent, players are asked to reach to these coordinates (X:1458,Y:235) and work together to destroy the structure which is the anchor.}
{Event notice: Contaminated slaves appeared in the vicinity, stop them from reaching the structure. For every slave that reach the structure, the creation progress will increase by 1%.}
[Contaminated slave
Level: 5
Health: 6000
Nature: Single minded]
"Young ones! We will stop those creatures, you go and kill those slaves before they reach the structure. We have already called for reinforcements to join you. Now go!"
{5 contaminated slaves have spawned!}
5 of those ugly looking overgrown meatballs spawned at different corners of the forest and started walking towards the structure, luckily they are slow.
"Suko! Grab the aggro of one of those."
She went to the nearby slave and attacked it.
[-9]
"Crap! Let me try, Suo you come too."
[-12]
[-14.6]
"These guys got way too much defense and health. Use the crowd control skills to restrict their movement and stall them until more players come."
All three of us had one or two cc skills, so restricted the slaves movement for a little time, these slaves only try to go towards the shrine so they never attacked us.
{All party under event location are automatically formed in one alliance with no player count limit, may players work together to protect their home.}
Due to us being present from before, I got the alliance leader. I saw many players joining in the alliance as they started to come out from the forest.
[Alliance chat:
"Who are the group leaders in here, please raise your hands!"
"0/"
"0/"
"0/"
"0/"
"0/"
…
…
…
"All group leaders got the lead, please arrange your party. We need to stop the contaminated slaves and kill them before they reach the shrine. Look at their health. They got very high defense so cc them and then burst them down."
"But who are you? Why we must-"
"My team got the main quest for the event, thus we are the lead in the alliance. Please cooperate or we might lose our starting place. Once failed the entire planet will die and all players will get very bad status."]
I had to stop them from causing a ruckus about leadership, or more problems would have started. Due to the high player count, we finished the slaves before they reached near the shrine; then we heard a shout from the enemy side.
"Send more flesh!"
{15 Contaminated slaves have been spawned!}
This time no one got time to laze around, ccing 15 of them was still alright; but we found that their defense got increased, causing players to deal less than 10 points of damage a lot. Good thing that before rushing here players bought supplies, so they could keep up the dps.
"Send all of them! Let our lord see our dedication!"
{50 Contaminated slaves have been spawned!}
"Will they ever stop! Guys! CC them. DPS players concentrate on one slave each!"
"Stop that one! It's near the middle!"
"Three are still moving! CC them!"
"23 more left! Keep it up!"
"Left side! That one is near the shrine!"
"Kill them fast!"
{One slave reached the shrine, creation progress: 91%}
"Stop them!"
{One slave reached the shrine, creation progress: 92%}
{One slave reached the shrine, creation progress: 93%}
{All contaminated slaves have been killed!}
"Infidels! Accept judgement!"