Confronting Thomas

On the way back, all Guage could talk about was the massive pile of treasure they had collected. Armor, weapons both normal and enchanted was the least of it, once all the copper and silver had been collected it had added up to 1527 gold. On top of that they both had the berserk skill. They each had 11 levels worth of stats and skills. they had 33 stat points to distribute each as well as 5 skill points, it seemed that you would get 1 skill point every two levels. With the exception of luck and charisma every other stat could be leveled up normally, Uriel had never tried to level up charisma when he was a beta tester. He could understand luck needing special items, but he couldn't figure out why charisma would need it as well. Uriel decided to put 9 points to his strength and 6 to the other 4 stats, he also put one skill point to the Endless abyss skill. He decided to save his other four as he was going buy higher level skills when they got back to Thomas's overlook.

Uriel-Lvl 16

Stats

Str. 31+10=41

Charisma-18

Agility-23

Wisdom-22

Intelligence-22

Luck-18

Vitality-23+10=33

Skills

Heal-lvl 2 heals 5 pts/sec/2 mana

Hammers Holy Strike- lvl 2 hits for 225% of str+vit/8 mana

Endless Abyss-lvl 1 Cost 35 mana stats increase 10% for 5 min

Guage leveled up Endless Abyss so they could stay the same there he also leveled up his Holy invulnerability since he could only use two skill points anyway. however he put 15 points to his strength, 10 points to his agility and the other 8 points he put on his intelligence.

Guage Lvl 16

Stats

Str.- 53

Agi. -31

Chr. -10

Wsdm.-12

Intg.-16

Lck.-2

Vit-26

Skills

Holy Invulnerability- Lvl 2 invulnerable for 10 sec/ cost 20 mana

Endless Abyss- lvl 1 cost 35 mana stats increase 10% for 5 min

Uriel couldn't believe when Guage actually put points on his intelligence, he thought for sure it would all go to his strength. When Uriel pointed this out, Guage just laughed, he also added that he wasn't a fool. With the 8 points he had he barely had enough to cast the 2 skills he had once each this way he could at least do them both twice. It was Uriel's turn to just nod.

" Ya know we made out like bandit's here Uriel, so why the long face? You're acting like you just lost your best friend." Guage couldn't hold back even thought they had scored a treasure horde and leveled up a total of 13 times on this mission, Uriel looked troubled.

"Well think about it for a second, only 8 hours or so ago we were new recruits to the Paladins. Do you think we would have passed this mission if not for Ames spell. No, we got lucky if we had gone down in that cave and the warning letter had been just that a warning letter, we would have been forced to turn back. We wouldn't have got the skill we got, we would probably have stayed at level 3 and Onze would have requested back up from the Royal army or some other force. If you really think about it all started with Thomas, why did he give me this hammer, I mean its cursed. Sure Drogon said it'll give me power, but does that only mean strength. To level this thing up to level 3 I need to Sacrifice 10 uncommon enchanted weapons to it. And since it's bonded to me I might as well level it up right? I mean the cost alone is crazy, out of all that treasure we got one uncommon enchanted weapon. Was that even a rare mission. And now we need to track down 4 transformed Mages of who knows what power level. The quest is legendary and it has penalties for failure..."

"Woah breath man, I'm sure Ames will help us out plus as long as we wait a day or two my friend will be level 10 and then we'll have a mage on our side. I'm sure you have friends as well leveling up right now so we'll be a much stronger party right?" As Guage was saying this they were passing into Thomas's Overlook. Not 40 feet away was the man himself as Thomas looked up Uriel was already standing in front of him.

"Explain yourself old man!" Uriel was near shouting so he attracted a lot of attention. Many of the Paladin NPC's gave Uriel a cold glare and a couple even started to get there weapons ready. " Why would you give me this hammer it's cursed?!" Guage was trying to pull Uriel's away from Thomas with out looking like it, more then a couple of the Paladins now had weapons ready and were heading there way.

Thomas made a waving gesture to the Paladins, a couple looked like they weren't going to stop, so Thomas looked right at them and shook his head. " Hmmm, lvl 2 already that's impressive." Thomas looked like he wasn't going to budge about his decision, nor did it look like he was going to explain. " Come, let us go see little Onze. There I shall Impart to you what little knowledge still remains in this old noggin of mine." Uriel, starred as Thomas was already over 10 feet away. " Hey don't you have a reward to collect it seems like you may have been successful?" How did he even know they had been on a quest. With Thomas already on the move all they could do was follow.

" Hey I know you're a little upset but can you not get us killed by the NPC's? I would like to keep the advantage of levels that we've already built up. You never know if they might just decide to kill us all the way back to level one." Guage looked serious.

" No worries there the most we would have got it a little jail time friendly NPC's don't kill players. As a tester it was one of the first things I did was to kill a NPC, I was given one natural day in jail. The game forced me to log off, and I lost three day of in game time, but it really wasn't that big a deal." Uriel shrugged. " Besides I figured on my luck and charisma working together and getting us out of the situation. I'm sorry I didn't let you in on the plan but I really couldn't let the opportunity slip by. More info is better then less right? Also now we get to confront Onze for sending us on that suicide mission. By the way what is your charisma at I know your luck is at 2?" Uriel gave a sideways glance at Guage, he could tell by his face that it wasn't good. " You really do just like hitting things don't you." Guage smiled weakly.

"Charisma is at 10, I told you 32 beginning strength seemed like a good idea. Now however I'm beginning to wonder. I didn't realize you couldn't build up your luck or charisma skill normally. I mean really how bad can it be?" Uriel held up one finger." You were only able to raise your luck one point in three months!" Guage couldn't believe it.

" You miss understand, out of the 100 beta testers only one raised his luck 1 point. No one had even tried to raise their charisma, so no one knows how hard that'll even be. With your luck alone I think that you'd best just stick with me. I mean in one day we almost got to the same level I got to a beta tester. Although I think we might have a bit of a harder time leveling up from now on, I don't think we'll be running through another army anytime soon and higher level creatures probably won't start appearing till after we go see Ames. To go see Ames will take us a week in game traveling at least, not to mention we do have to wait for our friends." Guage looked beat down. "Didn't you play Celestial, I mean same company, even the design seems the same really." Guage shook his head." What, but how I thought everybody around the world played." Uriel couldn't understand it. How could he be so good yet never have played Celestial.

"Uhh, you ever hear of a game called Dragon Knights?" Uriel looked at the man in front of him. Scrutinizing his face completely. Then a light went off in his head." So you have, well I'm the creator of that game."

" I thought Oberon's Revenge banned you from ever playing their games?" This man was Mark Leste, he had waged a legal battle against Oberon's Revenge Game company, claiming they had stole his whole idea. The case had fallen apart in court when the judge who was an avid gamer himself played one week of in game time in each game. When he finished he flat out stated that although there were similarities the games were miles apart. Dragon Knights sale fell through the floor as most gamer's just thought he was some shady business man trying to get rich off other peoples hard work." How?"

"Well after everything, they came to me and after some discussions they decided to buy the fighting engine system I created part of the deal was I would be no longer banned." The perfect timing on the blocks made sense now. He created the way everything in this game was going to fight.

" Hmmm seems like were here. After this meeting we need to go to the tavern, and if you can, can you tell me more of the combat system?" Uriel was hopeful, because that would be a huge advantage. Guage just shook his head no.

"Confidentially agreement, I can tell people who I am and how I got unbanned, but any details about the system and I'll be sued out the ass."