Tomes looked at the crowd of players before him. All of them were busy talking to one another about the sudden and overwhelming event that has been laid before them just now. Although the chattering was mostly indistinct, he can pick up a few lines here and there. And some of them he can’t help but smile at the absurdity of it.
“What is this ****?”
“Ah great, just great. This is my third time getting out of character creation and this ************* **** happened! My Friday night, IS RUINED!”
“Who’s that guy anyway?”
“I believe he’s called shut the **** up.”
"That’s a dictator. That’s a dictator you guys!"
"That’s not a dictator you dumb ****."
“What the, I can’t fast travel. Yo, check out yours to see if it’s working.”
"Same here, is it broken or something?"
"What a ****** way to start the game."
“I’m gonna start a P. Butthole cult here.”
“I heard that you can romance all the NPCs in this game.”
“Even the children?”
“Dude, that’s ****** up.”
“So I was like, ‘hey, give me a copy of the full season.’ And he was like, ‘sure, no prob.’ And yeah, so a day later, we both meet up and he was like, ‘hey, here’s the full season.’ And of course I was like, ‘cool, thanks bro.’ And I hurried home. So I headed straight to my room right? And then I plugged the drive into my pc and played the first episode. I was wondering why it’s only eight minutes long. That was the time when I realized…the ************ gave me the abridged version!”
“Can you guys shut up for a sec!? I’m getting deaf with all these bleeps!”
“************* **** **** ***** *****!”
“********* ****!”
“**** **** ***** *****!”
“Aagh!!!”
“Hey guys, check this out.” Gloomy’s voice pulled Tomes’ attention away from the crowd and back to the group.
“I was contacting a buddy of mine in another zone who knows a dude who knows a dude that knows a dude that’s also a moderator in this game, and I asked them this: Is this game hacked or is this just another event? And after a chain of long and excruciating message relays…”
Tomes, Spooky, and the others leaned close to hear what Gloomy was going to say next.
“The answer is yes!” Excluding Gloomy, all their heads tilted sideways in comical unison.
“What do you mean ‘Yes?’” Tomes asked.
“It’s a hack and an event at the same time. Bulwark itself does not even know what caused it. They’re currently investigating the matter by the way. We might get some real answers tomorrow, maybe.” Gloomy snickered. “It’s so fucking surreal.”
Their attention was directed back to the crowd when the chatters were starting to get loud. From a somewhat normal conversation discussing about the mysterious figure and the threat he’ll bring, the chattering quickly descended into a fiery word war of players cursing at each other.
Since most if not all of them had their profanity filters on, all that can be heard in the town square was a loud endless stream of bleeping sounds. The censor tune concealing the curse words did not even hinder the players from lashing out and so they bleeped away as much as they can to anypony that they could.
This brutal exchange of words was only moments away from starting another death match like the one that happened several minutes ago.
“Oh shit.” Gloomy said as he watched the players traded hot spit to one another. “Another serving of chaos is brewing.” He looked at his team before continuing. “Imma get into character and break this up before it begins.”
He trotted towards the square’s fountain, metallic boots clinked with every step on the concrete ground. As he passed by the players, some ceased their pointless quarrelling to gawk at Gloomy’s character. But the majority of the crowd ignored the bulky looking high level in Dark Cerberean armor as he trotted past them.
Upon arriving at the fountain’s pool, Gloomy stepped himself up on the on one of the dikes that prevented the water from spilling out to the ground. Even if he’s a now bit a taller than everypony else and it’s very likely that they can all see him now, they still ignored him.
With his right wing, Gloomy raised his staff up, the searing magma covered tip aimed straightly at the sky. He opened up a skill slot with his right hoof and scrolled upwards until he can see his first batch of skills, the one a player can complete upon reaching level eight.
He pressed the third skill in the slot which was named ‘Soul Scorcher.’ The image in the icon looked like a charred silhouette of a screaming pony in a hellish background. After activating the spell, blue digits came out from his body while sensing a familiar surge of power flow in his right wing and into his staff.
The energy itself was fired out of the end of the rod and took the form of a blazing stream of fire quickly rocketing itself upwards in the sky. It exploded several meters above its caster, creating a thin sheet flames above the square. It was then followed by a series of explosions that’s similar to a fireworks display but several times faster and only uses a single spectrum of color, fiery orange.
Everypony went silent as the spell was casted. All eyes were now focused on the spectacle above that lasted for over half a minute. Nothing but thundering sounds filled the town square for a long while, and everypony was completely enamored by Gloomy’s spell. Once the explosions slowly faded into silence, all ponies looked towards the fountain, to the pony in black, wielding a magma rod. Gloomy sighed, he finally has their attention.
“Alright everypony, listen up!” He cried out, raising his voice so that everypony could hear what he’s saying. “We all know the situation is pretty shitty right now, but I have a plan to deal with this. It might not be perfect, but it will guarantee to get everyone of you stronger fast and your survival at the end. All I need is your full cooperation and willingness to follow orders.”
Gloomy could see in the front that some of the player’s raised a brow at his last line, specifically the part about following orders. He’s got to do something about this.
“And don’t worry about getting exploited.” He quickly assured them. “I am not that kind of pony. All I want is to get through this hurdle and see to it that others do it too. And afterwards, I will ask nothing of you, because you’re not indebted to me. I can tell that you guys want nothing from me and just want to waddle with this by yourselves. But there are times when us gamers must unite in order to achieve a single goal. And this is one of those times. We might begin as shattered pieces, but we’ll get out of this a newly formed newly formed single working unit, capable of dealing any problem that comes our way.”
Gloomy paused, looking at the crowd from left to right.
“For those who wants to join my cause, please raise a hoof.”
Everypony was silent. They just stood there, looking at Gloomy. Although it’s not the outcome he preferred, he’s expected something like this to happen.
“Also you’ll have fun.” He flatly stated.
A single glimmering hoof was raised in the crowd. It was then followed by another, and another, and dozens have followed on. Soon everypony was raising their hooves. A hopeful look was etched on their faces. Gloomy’s warrior ally, XxDEXMACHINAXx whistled a somber tone that may or may not reference a movie while raising a hoof only to be hit by Hejira101 on his sides with her elbow.
Gloomy straightened himself up. For a few seconds after the hoof raising, he was quiet, speechless even. He didn’t expect he’d get such a positive review on his speech. The speech was pretty dumb. He thought. But who’d deny an offer from somepony whose level is forty times higher than theirs? And not to mention the fine looking armor to match. He raised a hoof in reply, and raised it back down. The crowd soon followed Gloomy’s actions.
“Okay guys, before we talk about the plan, I want you to open the Chat:POT in your game menu. It’s a small icon that looked like a smiling pot.”
Tomes was still standing in the same spot when Gloomy left for the fountain a moment ago. He was surprised that not one pony here didn’t resist his offer. But what surprised him more was Spooky’s hasty raising of her hoof. Despite the hostilities, she really does care for her brother.
Tomes looked at Spooky, his face confused. “Pot?”
“It’s an acronym for ‘Party Only Talk.’” Spooky replied, eyes still focused to the speaker on the fountain.
“After you opened it, please select the room named ‘Us Heirs.’ That’s where I’ll brief you all about the plan.” Gloomy called out. “That way, you can hear me talk without screaming all the time.”
Tomes followed Gloomy’s advice. He swiped a hoof into the air to open up his game menu. He pressed an icon of a pot with a large smile at the center. Another window overlapped the menu with the large words ‘Chat Rooms’ on its upper side. The list of rooms was empty save for the one that Gloomy recommended, the ‘Us Heirs’ room.
After pressing said room, the window changed its name from ‘Chat Rooms’ to ‘Us Heirs.’ In the small black box, Tomes could see a growing list of all players who have joined the pot, the ‘add member’ and ‘leave party’ buttons, and also the volume icon. Tomes fiddled with the volume for a bit and found out that it’s just a normal volume option, one can set on how loud the room will be or mute it out just in case the ponies inside started to get annoying.
“Just a quick tip you guys.” Tomes almost flinched when he heard that. Gloomy’s voice was loud. It’s like listening to music with headphones on. Tomes pressed on the volume icon and dragged the sounds down to a lower level to avoid any surprises like that in the future. After setting his preferences on the chat room’s loudness, he looked back to Gloomy standing on the fountain.
“If you don’t want your curses censored, you can just switch it off in your settings.”
The rest of the crowd proceeded to open up their settings and turned off their filters. Tomes didn’t have to do any of that, he already adjusted his a while ago. He continued to look at Gloomy as he chatted with his teammates while the others were still focused on their settings. He’s so far away and yet his voice sounded like his mouth was pressed against Tomes’ ears. It felt weird. It’ll take a lot of time for him to get used to this.
Now that everypony had turned their filters off, they’re now eager to test it out in the chat room. Once more, the town square erupted into a slurred noise of players cursing freely in the chat room. And again, Tomes can’t help but pick out some of the ‘creative’ curses that pop out here and there that the players devised.
“Asshole fister.”
“Motherfucking cunt pisser.”
“Clitoris massacre.”
“Free DLC.”
“Golden anal shower in dog.”
“Pungent granny pussy stench.”
“Ookay guys, that’s enough.” Gloomy called out, halting the crowd’s filthy barrage of words in the room. “Before I begin with the briefing, I need to do a headcount first in order to determine how many players we’re gonna assign in each gate. Uh, it’s the current size divided by four, I guess.”Gloomy turned to look at Hejira101. “Hej, I want you to do the math once we get the results.”
The archer in green nodded.
“Okay, so let’s start with my team here so that already makes three.” Gloomy looked at the player in the farthest left end of the front line. “You there, you begin as number four.” He looked at the pony beside the player and said. “And you’re number five and so on and so forth. Now sound off!”
The head count started out slow but Gloomy sped it while gesturing a hoof in a rolling action. He counted along with the ponies while pointing his hoof at the one who’s going to shout next. This thing of his happened again and again until they’ve reached the final number of a hundred and forty-four.
“One forty-four?” Gloomy addressed to everypony, an apparent tone of surprise lingered in his voice. “There’s like a thousand players running around town a while ago. Now that’s one hell of a bloodbath, dude. But still, those players should be coming back, right?”
Somepony shouted in the crowd. “Then why aren’t they?”
“Ragequit.” Hejira firmly replied.
“Okay.”Gloomy said, looking down on the ground while rubbing the metallic back of his head with a hoof. “We can do this, we can do this…I hope.” His head sprung right back up. His body took a straightened form once more. “Now let’s do a headcount on how many warriors we have. We’ll do the same thing next with the mages, and then with the archers. All warriors, raise a hoof!”
All the ponies with the warrior class did exactly as they’re ordered. They raised their hooves up into the air while Hejira silently counted each and one of them. Once the archer was done counting, Gloomy commanded the warriors to lower their hooves and opted the mages to do the same. This also happened with archers until Gloomy ordered them to put their hooves down once Hejira was done counting.
“Okay everypony, here’s the result of the counting: we have eighty warriors, thirty-nine mages, and twenty-five archers.” He turned again to look at Hejira. “Hej, do the uh…thing.”
The archer was quick at the draw, replying not a second later after Gloomy finished speaking. “There should be twenty warriors per gate, six archers in three gates, seven in one. And as for the mages, three gates get to have ten while one gate will just have to settle with nine. It’d be preferable to have seven archers pair up with the nine mages just to preserve a semblance of balance in the defense.”
“You hear that guys?” Gloomy said. “That’s the problem with odd numbers, they’re too odd when it comes to stuff like this. You either have to go asymmetrical or chop one of your buddies evenly just to keep things balanced.” This got a soft giggle out of the crowd, even Spooky who was now failing to hide her giggles from Tomes.
“Okay. We’re gonna do another headcount again. But this time, it’s about subclasses. We’ll do a count on the ones that I think will be essential in executing my plan. So let’s tally down how many…” Gloomy scratched his metallic chin while looking up. He hummed as he quickly gathered the thoughts in his mind.
“Healers…” He looked back down before continuing. “Builders, cooks, artists, pharmacists, blacksmiths, and merchants we have here. Okay everypony, raise a hoof if I mentioned your subclass.”
One by one, Gloomy called out a subclass and a hoofful of ponies in the crowd would raise their hooves. He started calling out all the builders, then the cooks, the artists, and ended the call with the merchants. Sometimes a large group of ponies would share a single subclass. And sometimes, only one player would represent that class.
After the counting was over, Gloomy announced their findings.
“Okay, so we have eleven builders, seventeen cooks,” Gloomy turned to look at DEXMACHINA. “That’s too many cooks for you to handle Dex. Three artists, including me, nine merchants,” He paused to look at Hejira. “Not a bad amount, amirite. Hej? And thirty healers, a very, very good amount, if I do say so myself, five blacksmiths, and one pharmacist.” Gloomy took at a look at the crowd, particularly in the vicinity where the only pharmacist in the group was standing.
“Are you really sure you’re the only pharmer here, Galop?” Gloomy asked, staring directly at the player named Infernalgalop.
“Eh.” Galop replied. “I don’t blame them for not picking this class. Hell, I only chose this one because it resembles my job in the real world.”
“And that’s one too many personal information coming out from you, Galop.” Gloomy retorted quickly. “Oh, and for the players who didn’t get their subclasses mentioned earlier, please save your questions until the end of this briefing because I have a perfectly valid reason that you may or may not agree with. Moving on.”
“And now for the main course.” Everypony in the square sprung up from their idling poses, as if they were zapped in the flanks by lightning. Their faces of boredom that looked petrified several count offs ago shattered within seconds and was replaced with a look of alertness and interest.
“Let’s talk plans, fellas. Battle plans.”
Gloomy cleared his throat before starting. “So the first thing on the list is to have you guys learn Recall in the local guild. That skill is a must have when it comes to situations like this one. The next thing to do will be to raise your characters up to level ten before midnight. And once you’ve reached ten, you are now entitled to wield Eubby’s Defender Armor. But you’ll have to craft it in the town forge first. I’ll just tell you where to get the crafting materials later once we’ve began questing. Crafting the full set takes time, usually several minutes to an hour, I guess?”
Gloomy looked at the spots to where the players with the blacksmith subclass were presumably standing.
“And that’s where the blacksmiths come in. If one blacksmith would help the NPCs craft the set at the forge, the time for its completion would be reduced by one whole minute.”
The players in the crowd don’t seem to be impressed at the new info they’ve learned. The look on their faces was evident to that. Gloomy anticipated that something like this would happen, he grinned inside his black metal helmet.
“You think that won’t make any difference? His voice suddenly sounded smug, as if he was declaring to everypony subtly that he had read their minds. “Well, think again! Let’s see, uh, I’m gonna use a metaphor here. Think of a single blacksmith as a piece of stick. A single piece of stick is brittle, and weak. But if it is joined with a couple of sticks and then tied into a bundle, it will turn into a broom. And I think nopony’s gonna disagree with me that brooms are tough things to break. So to put it simply, a single blacksmith could hardly make a difference, but a group of blacksmiths? Now you’re gonna see some changes.”
Gloomy geared up for another one of his dramatic pauses.
“Big changes.”
He then turned to look at Hejira. “So uh, Hej. How many blacksmiths do we
have again?”
“Five.”
“Moving on!”
“Once we’re done with the armor, we’re gonna have to set the town on high alert next. Which means that you won’t see NPCs wandering around anymore as they will be busy hiding inside their homes. But militias will be on patrol though. And barricades are gonna be set up in every street in town. And the turrets, they’re gonna be operational.”
Some ears in the crowd suddenly perked up when they heard about the turrets, amongst those ears belonged to Tomes.
“And no, you cannot operate the turrets.” Gloomy quickly added, killing all the curious players’ hope of using whatever weapon the town’s turrets have in store. “Only the NPCs, namely the militia are allowed in there. But players can roam around the walls. In which I strongly recommend archers to do that, especially during the battle.”
“Okay so uh, what’s next, what’s next…” Gloomy tapped his chin while saying so. “Oh. We’re gonna have the builders dig up moats outside the town. Well, they’re not moats exactly as we’re not gonna fill them up with water. But instead we’re gonna put sharpened bamboo poles inside to impale any stupid undead that trips and falls there. And as for the poles, there’s a bamboo forest just south west of Eubby. And don’t worry about dragging those tall, heavy things with you back to town, you can just put them inside your inventory and trot happily away. You won’t feel a single weight, trust me. Okay, so the next thing to do is that the cooks…wait. How many cooks do we have again? Hej?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s a good number, a really good one. So what I’m gonna have you do is to go to every food producing establishment around town and serve our defense party with a buffet’s worth of food.”
Gloomy pointed a hoof at DEXMACHINA. “Dex here will teach you how to properly use your subclass’s abilities since he’s a cook himself, and a damn good one at that. And while the others are busy doing their stuff, we, the artists, yeah, all three of us are going to paint propaganda posters and you know, stick them in every wall we find in town, specifically that great big one that surrounds it. We might also have to post these things within the town’s interior as well, in case the zombies pushes us back inwards, although I hope that’s not going to happen.”
Gloomy shrugged. “But just in case, just in case. Then at least we’ve come prepared. And one more thing, guys. I want you to stock up as many potions as you can before the battle begins. Also, check out this item called ‘tent’ in the market.”
He opened his inventory to spawn an item from his consumables window. After pressing the item named ‘tent’ in the list, a bunch of existence cubes materialized in front of him, quickly turning into a long cylindrical green bag. Gloomy reached out a hoof underneath the rapidly forming cubes to catch it as it took form. He then raised the bag up to fully show it to the crowd.
“See this? This is the tent I was talking to you about. It’s a nifty little thing that fully restores a party’s HP and MP once used. And by party, I mean only five ponies per usage. But considering that each one costs about five hundred bits, we’re gonna need the merchants’ help for these kind of purchases.”
Gloomy looked at Hejira again. “Hey Hej, you gonna take this one?”
“Why?” Hejira’s voice was firm and cold.
“Because you know, this is your subclass and al-uh, you know what? I’ll just do the talking here. Okay, so where was I? Ah yes. In case some of you guys don’t know, the merchants have a skill called ‘Haggle’ which they can convince a vendor NPC to reduce the prices of their products by a couple bits off the initial price. Just think of it as a discount coupon turned skill. Now that we’ve set that up, what I want you guys to do is to give your potion money to these merchants so that they’ll buy the items for you at a lower price.”
“Hej here,” Gloomy pointed a hoof at Hejira. “Will supervise this ‘mercantalist’ activity to avoid any merchant ripping off other players. Let me just remind you guys that we need every player here well supplied with potions and other consumables to survive the upcoming onslaught. And also, in game currency is useless if you die at the end anyway.”
“And lastly.” Gloomy looked at Galop again. “I want the pharmacists,” He paused to clear his throat. “...pharmacist to whip us up some stat boosting pills to aid us in battle. I know it won’t be much since we only have a single pharmer here at the moment. But still, one’s better than having nothing at all and we need every bit of help we can get. And to the players whose subclass was not mentioned during the briefing, I want you guys to be the ones who’ll harvest the bamboo for the moats and also to distribute the propaganda posters around town.”
Gloomy tilted his head and looked at the distance, thinking if he had anymore to add in this briefing. A hoof lightly touched his lip while doing so. He let out a pondering hum.
“That’s pretty much it, I guess.” He broke away from his thinking stance and looked back to the crowd of players standing in wait. “Time for the question and answer session? I, uh, what I mean is...it’s time for the question and answer session. For those who have one, just raise a hoof.”
A single tanned hoof rose itself up from the sea of players. Gloomy recognized it to be Tomes.’ “Ah, Tome_Raider76,” He addressed Tomes in his username, for obvious privacy reasons. “What’s your question?”
“So uh, BBox,” Tomes responded in kind. “What about us healers? You didn’t mention the things we need to do despite our subclasses being mentioned in the list.”
“I thought it was self-explanatory considering your subclass is one that simply heals. Okay, to make it clear, what I want you guys to do is to heal your allies whenever you can as often as possible. You see, the upgrade system for your subclass focuses on the number of players you heal. Currently, you can only restore five HP per cast. But if you heal more players, its healing rate is gonna get higher. I think it adds a single HP every one hundred players healed.”
“One hundred?” Tomes whined. “That’ll take forever.”
“Well. Better start healing then.” Gloomy looked back to the crowd. “Anymore questions?” Another hoof raised itself at the far end of the group. It belonged to a player named ‘Conio_Apretado.’
“You there! Uh, Conio. Conio_Apretado? What’s that supposed to mean? It sounds foreign, like foreign food.”
“Oh it’s food alright.” Conio softly quipped, an apparent tone of mischief in his voice.
“Okay, so what’s your question?”
“What about the other subclasses?” Conio’s question roused up a few murmurs in the masses. Gloomy assumed those belonged to the ponies whose subclass was not mentioned in the briefing. “You said you have a valid reason for not making use of it. Mine’s a botanist and I want to know why my subclass is not useful in this situation. Not that I’m complaining for not having any work, just curious is all.”
“Well Conio,” Gloomy paused to gather his thoughts once more. He knew this question was coming and already planned the answers ahead of time. He just hoped that they will be satisfied with his replies. “And to you other players whose subclass I didn’t find useful at a time like this, how about this instead? You tell me what your subclass is and I’ll reply with a very brief explanation regarding the fact that they won’t be useful here.”
The players muttered in agreement. “Okay, good. To those whose subclass was not mentioned, please raise your hoof and I’ll answer you one by one. Once I’m done with you, you can now put down your hooves. And to those who shared the same subclass with whom I recently answered, you can put your hooves down as well. Okay. So let’s begin!”
Gloomy pointed a hoof at a mage stallion in a green cloak. “Natt9! What’s your subclass?” The mage told Gloomy what his was and the high level mage gave a quick and concise reason on why his subclass as a miner will not be useful in this event or zone due to the lack of ores and gems in the zone they were in. But Gloomy offered him a place amongst the builders in digging up the moat outside the town. Although, he’ll resort to using his subclass’ tool which is a pickaxe instead of the standard shovel a builder class player uses.
After Gloomy was done with Natt9, there were a dozen hooves in the crowd who put themselves down. Those ponies probably have the same subclass as Natt9’s, he thought. He picked another player with an unmentioned subclass and gave them a brief answer on how they’re not going to be used this time. This cycle of asking and answering has dragged on for several minutes, much to everypony’s dismay.
The subclasses that Gloomy answered to included a botanist, pathfinder, scholar, tamer, bartender, librarian, gambler, camper, and diver, and what’s worse was that these subclasses were already proven unusable even at first glance when it comes to a situation such as this. But these players didn’t think about it and just mindlessly asked Gloomy about it. Fortunately, Gloomy was patient enough to answer all of their questions, no matter how pointless that may be.
Gloomy scanned the sea of players from end to end. He was certain that the diver subclass was the last one but it doesn’t hurt to double-check.
“That’s it? That’s the last one?” He asked everypony. Even though their chattering was indistinct, Gloomy could make out that their answer was a yes. And with that he was relieved. He gave out a sigh and wiped his black metallic head to show them how he felt.
“Good, good. Let’s proceed with the actual questions then.”
One pony in the front row raised his hoof. It’s a player named ‘Puncakes18.’ Given that what he’s wearing was an orange turtle neck layered above with a red vest, one can assume that he’s a fire type warrior, the most common combination in the game.
“Yes Puncakes18, what’s your question?”
“Can we have sex in this game?” The pony said in between snickers. With the shrill tone of his voice, Gloomy thought it was safe to assume that he was talking to a child right now. And with a couple other ponies snickering in the chat room, he felt like he’s become the butt of the joke here. Gloomy laughed along with it, not because it’s funny, but because he knew what his next reply will be.
“Sure. Lie down and I’ll show you.” He replied smugly. The laughter in the room just got louder. “But seriously though.” Gloomy said while waiting for crowd’s mirth to die down. Once the room was silent again, he continued. “You can ask me anything, as long as it’s related to the plan.”
Another player raised her hoof. This time it was from an earth type mage named ‘SkydamKrieger.’ Gloomy gestured for her to speak.
“Does your fast travel button work?”
Gloomy’s ears perked up underneath his helmet. The question piqued his interest. He looked back to his two allies, who immediately opened up their game menus. He quickly followed suit and opened his as well.
“Huh, that’s strange.” He said while constantly pressing to a location that’s within another zone. Usually by now, he’d teleport to that particular area. But he didn’t. All he got was an empty beeping sound that plays when the travel button was pressed. But other than that, it does nothing. Could this be a bug? Or is this a part of the hack slash event? He doesn’t know. The only thing that he’s sure of was that he’s stuck in this place for the time being.
Gloomy looked back to his allies again. “Anypony else experiencing this?” Dex and Hejira nodded in unison. Gloomy faced the crowd once more. “How about you guys?” Every player in the town square has now opened their game menus. They all looked back to Gloomy. Their answer was unanimous, a resounding yes.
“I get the feeling that they’re trapping us in this zone.” Gloomy announced. “I may need somepony to scout the zone’s exit to get more info later. Looks like we may need to use that pathfinder class afterall, Crisp.”
Crisprat, the player who asked Gloomy about his pathfinder subclass before grinned happily.
Gloomy decided to move back in to the question and answer session. “Alright, anymore questions?” Another pony raised a hoof. “Euranas, what is it you want answered?”
“What’s a recall?”
Gloomy facehoofed himself. A light clanking sound was made as metal hit metal. “Oh shit, I forgot. You’re new here. I definitely should have expanded on this. Okay, uh...recall is the ability to teleport a dying player to a nearby inn until they recover. It’s the best and only way to counter the permadeath in this game and it can be learned at any level.”
Another pony raised a hoof. “Discordfan669, nice name.” Gloomy’s compliment sounded obviously sarcastic. “What’s your question?”
“What’s up with propaganda posters? Are they supposed to emotionally inspire the players here or something?”
“Good question, 69.” Once more, Gloomy’s reply sounded sarcastic. “You see, the propaganda posters have the same effect as any other food based consumable in the game. They provide the players with stat boosts but instead of eating or drinking them, you just have to stand near them to acquire the boost. It’s like an aura, get too far and you won’t feel the benefit it gives off. That’s why I suggested earlier having the posters be placed around town so that their effects will never wane. Okay, next question. Oh, Conio! Please, ask away.”
“Can we fly here?”
“You haven’t tried it yet? All players are allowed to fly in the game. But there’s a time limit, though. The duration varies per level. The pegasi players here will probably already get the hang of it in a cinch. But the other two races? I dunno, I think you’re gonna need a lot of practice. It’s gonna take days, probably weeks just for you to hover above the ground. So I really don’t recommend using that tactic when fleeing from the dead in the future.”
Gloomy gave Conio a complimenting wave of his hoof. “That’s a really good question, thank you for asking that. Oh, you have another one? Shoot.”
“Earlier you said that that you’re gonna have our characters reach up to level ten before midnight, how do you propose we do that?”
“Guy’s asking the real questions here!” Gloomy looked back at Dex. If he wasn’t wearing that black three-horned helmet of his, everypony would see his smiling face right now. “I’m starting to like this guy.”
“Me too.” The warrior replied. “But not in the way you might think.”
Gloomy looked back to Conio. “Don’t worry about it. I know a walkthrough that will do just that. Let’s just wait until we’re questing so that I can tell you guys all the juicy details. Okay, next question.”
This time nopony raised a hoof. “Was that it?” Gloomy asked everypony. It’s probable that all their current questions were answered or they were just eager for some action after all that talking. Either way was fine for Gloomy. Some ponies simply nodded while others muttered yeses in separate timings.
“That’s a relief.” Gloomy let out a pondering hum. “Well, there it is. Uh, let’s proceed with the plan then.”
At Gloomy’s words all players marched in a single direction. Most ponies walked quietly while other ones trotted happily. Everypony in the group talked about the event that it filled the chat room with incoherent chatter. This sudden word buzz reminded Gloomy of something.
“Oh, wait, wait, wait!” Gloomy called out, causing the crowd to stop moving and focus their attentions back at the mage. “You guys should head for the local waymaid first and go through their tutorial. Go for the uh, the second one, the scenic route that is. You’ll gain another level after finishing it if your character is still under level five. And that’s an incentive you get for not using any shortcuts in the game. And one more thing, you guys can exit the chat:POT while doing the tutorial and get back in once you’re done. Alright guys, chop-chop! We don’t have all day.”