"So what do we do, then?"
Zena sniffed, then slapped her helmet down to her eyebrows. "We fight our way through. At worst, we'll die, but when did it stop immortals? At best, we'll smoke the bastards or even find their nest. The loot here is just as good even though we'll need a raid to do it."
So off we went. Our speed, meager as it was already, dropped to a snail's pace. Those who couldn't cast spells when mounted had to walk. I was followed by my personal reinforcement group represented by Hummungus and a level 78 gator I'd raised. We didn't go too far, though. They attacked us by the book, ambushing us at a particular section of the road which was far too troublesome to avoid. A couple dozen vague shadows came at us from every direction. Even a branch of prickly acacia over Bomba's head sported a tooth-baring monster. Two powerful figures appeared on top of a cliff about a hundred feet away from the road: the Patriarch and the Elder Vampire. In less than a heartbeat, the unstealthed shadows were all over our meager force.
"Control them! Back off, gradually!" Zena commanded.
Casters had about ten seconds while passive shields absorbed damage, allowing us to root and paralyze almost half of the attackers. We backed up, leaving in our wake a thin thread of vampires raging in impotent fury. Actually, we did give them the company of two motionless bodies: one smashed by the Troll's unwieldy club, the other perforated by Whizz's swords until it resembled my Mom's colander. Both Hummungus and the gator had turned into two swirling, growling and howling balls of flesh losing stats at a threatening pace as neither of them was up to their quarry. Having said that, they still did what they were supposed to do, drawing a certain amount of paws and claws to themselves. I was anxiously watching Teddy's stats as I alternated between casting Deadman's Hand and the Aura of Fear. The mobs kept resisting! The young vampire was all of fifty levels above me which made him virtually impregnable. And he was dangerous, too, very rogue-like with his two scythes and lightning combos, occasionally interspersed with his attempts to lunge forward at me and sink his fangs into my vulnerable flesh. The constant pressure from some auras they were using weighed my arms down, affecting my speed and attack strength; my miserable agility bonuses blinked red and expired. Even though the shields still held, my mana and hits kept dwindling—and as I looked at my opponent's scowl, I had a pretty good idea of where my stocks were disappearing to.
I kept glancing at Hummungus' life bar and hit the unsummon button just in time. He folded into his artifact and was now regenerating at triple speed. Very soon I'd be able to summon him again—no buffs this time and maybe for the better as there may be no one left to cast them for him.
Ouch! It felt as if I'd been lashed with a bunch of stinging nettles. A jetstream of prickles ran through my body as the vampire broke through the shields and tucked into my life bar.
I had plenty of hits, about four thousand, but even that would have lasted me a minute at the most—less, considering my breastplate's nature. I activated Jangur's Shield, allowing me an extra five seconds of uninterrupted casting time. Come on now, control him! Yess! The root spell had got him. The deadman's hands broke through the ground, clenching the vampire's feet. He jerked, hissing, his tiny scarlet eyes glaring at me. I ran a few paces back and cast Life Absorption, then began summoning my new pet: the zombie gator which reappeared almost simultaneously with Hummungus' comeback. Without interrupting the spell, I surveyed the battle field. Not good. I couldn't see Bomba at all under the five or six vampires that swarmed over her. Whizz was struggling to fight off two more, her health in the orange zone. Zena was gulping an elixir, ignoring another vampire's teeth which were already sinking into her as she hurriedly selected her team members as targets and sent them the precious few hits she had left—working against time, unable to heal everyone at once.
Two more enemies were hanging off our wizard and it looked as if she'd be the first one to croak. She looked as if she knew it, too. Scowling, she cast a quick spell, sending a wall of ice to swallow and freeze all enemies within a dozen paces. She shouted something long and unintelligible, causing a similar wall of fire to scorch everything around her. Immediately, my vampire's health dropped 25% and two more enemies fell from Whizz and Bomba. Before I knew it, she cast another wall of fire. I sighed with relief. Another couple of those would have solved the vampire problem. But apparently, murderous blanket attacks like those generated an indecent amount of aggro. The released vampires—including some of those that had clung to Bomba—all jumped onto Freckles burying her under a heap of their bodies. The group interface icon went gray, indicating we'd just lost one of our own. But it didn't help the enemy much. Freckles had already done her job. The remaining dozen were rather worse for wear, allowing Bomba's club to strike fear and desolation into the die-hard enemy.
A heart-wrenching howl came from atop the cliff where a couple of mobs stood frozen, forgotten in the heat of the battle. To the sounds of retreat, the remaining vampires scattered in all directions like roaches in a dark room when you turn the light on.
We stood there, panting and looking all around us, but there were no enemies left. Their lookouts had promptly stealthed so now nothing reminded of what had just happened there, apart from a good dozen bodies and our spent frames.
"Bandages, elixirs, buff foods! You'll have to heal yourselves for the moment, I'm all empty. I'll meditate and raise Freckles first, then I can heal and rebuff the rest of you. Laith, go check the bodies. Customers get all the loot."
Did she need to tell me? Every single one of the vampires made me a few gold richer. One of them dropped a small ruby—just some jewelry, no added stats. What did attract my attention, though, were three tiny vials dubbed as Vials of Blood and numbered as 91, 83 and 89. All the drop was automatically reported to the group chat.
Seeing the Vial messages, Zena perked up. "Blood, sweet blood! Let me check the charts. They could be rare numbers... No, no such luck. Twenty to thirty gold each."
"What's that, a lottery or something?" I asked.
"Don't you know? No, of course you don't. It's a top level game for the elite. Basically, sometimes vampires drop these vials, each with a different blood group. Should be a hundred in total, in theory. The smaller the number, the cooler its owner was."
"Why in theory?"
"Because no one has come across the first five numbers yet. Even when we farmed Nosferatu Castle—and we were a hundred-strong raid and by the way, that's where we got those two blades for our Whizz—the Lord himself only dropped number 7. That's the way the cookie crumbles."
That got me interested. I used to collect all that stamp-and-coin stuff myself when I was a kid. "So what's gonna happen when someone gets the whole hundred?"
Zena cracked up laughing. "No one knows, that's the whole thing! The fullest collection I know of contains ninety-one vials. The fucking thing is addictive—and it's hot at the moment, probably one out of three collects them. Here, I'll forward you the chart. You never know, you might need it."
My Inbox dinged. I opened the file. Wow. It wasn't just a price list, but a complete guidebook answering everything about what, where, how often and how much. Indeed, the first five numbers sported nothing but question marks. I liked it. I wouldn't mind collecting the full hundred myself. There could be a nice mega goodie at the end of it.