Chương 107: B2 Chapter 15 - Cheese Spot

"How long have you been having an affair for, Aiden?" Veyra's words froze me on the spot. She was already online by the time I woke up the next day, having gone to sleep a little late after spending time with Anna. I faced her in the guild hall, head struggling to think. An affair? What?

"It's kinda weird to have an affair with your sister," Veyra said with a smirk, and opened the system to show me something. A post on the forums, titled, " Assassin A caught having an affair?" The post showed a screenshot from the parking lot of Ender's game getting into the car with Anna, taken from the doors. Veyra laughed at it, and I let out an internal sigh, awkwardly laughing with her. Ah, she's joking… I hadn't spotted anyone taking a picture of me. Was I really this famous?

"I thought you said you didn't have a car," Veyra said.

"When did you get that?"

"I, uh, wanted to go to a gaming cafe with Anna." I rubbed the back of my head.

"But the family car is being repaired, so I had to go buy a new car first."

"That," she said, with a teasing smile, "is exactly the type of car I thought you'd like, Aiden." I had the urge to sigh. Should have just gotten a used Toyota…

"You're not the first to make fun of me for that," I said.

"But I do like the car. That's why I bought it."

"Congrats," she said.

"Although, I'd say we shouldn't be too irresponsible with our money, even if you have a lot now. We might just die in-game and lose all the momentum we have."

"You know, everyone is telling me the exact same thing." She laughed and said, "Sorry, sorry. Did you get the flights?"

"Yep, February second, and I'm arriving at nine AM your time." She nodded.

"Alright. I'll try to meet you at the airport." She didn't necessarily seem excited, but from previous experiences, that didn't mean that she wasn't looking forward to it. She'd stressed out about Worlds even more, and that turned out to be awesome. There was still a lot I didn't understand about her. A lot I could still learn. It would be only our second time meeting in real life. First though, we had a week to play Wonderwind.

"I played a little more yesterday," I said.

"I found a few deserter camps nearby like you suggested. They didn't really have any info we didn't already know."

"I don't think NPC's can help us learn Shaltar's attack patterns," Veyra said.

"That'll be our next goal. The boss…" The way she said that didn't inspire confidence. We had the tools to cheese high level bosses now, but still needed a situation in which the tools could be utilised. It wouldn't be as easy, especially since we just sold the Emerald Aurora.

"I'm guessing the main problem will be getting to the boss," I said.

"We haven't even seen her once."

"That, and locking her into combat for long enough to burn down," Veyra said.

"She's somewhere in her castle, but if her AI is at all intelligent, she'll send her guards to screw with us. I tried testing the waters at the castle entrance today, and the guards called for backup the moment I tried to drag one of them out. The usual strategy of pulling one monster at a time won't work."

"Wait, so the monster NPCs are actually intelligent this time?"

"I'm not sure about intelligent," she said.

"But they're not robotic. They have survival instincts. If they feel threatened, they'll retreat and call for backup."

"So cheesing the monster AIs will be difficult…" I leaned my elbow on the table, thinking.

"We can't really fight anything head-on either. We'll just lose."

"Obviously. We need to somehow arrange five minutes alone with Shaltar." Veyra looked more stumped than usual, but she also looked focused on coming up with ideas.

"Alternatively," she said, "we need a method to drag one guard out at a time. They're still over level four hundred each. The XP will be good. We could pull guards to side alleys with my portals for a few minutes."

"Could work," I said, though I felt like there had to be better ideas.

"The robe has insane AoE, though. If you scrape some damage to a cluster of monsters, they'll all get burned. We could try to look at massacring larger armies at once."

"In my eyes, we'd already struggle against one monster at a time. I don't see how multiple would be any easier."

"If the hard part is separating enemies," I said.

"We can avoid that if we just burn everything at once."

"I mean…" she said with a bemused smile.

"We'll just die, though. We can't deal with level four hundred attacks from more than a few monsters at a time. That's the whole reason why they need to be separated. Or do you disagree?" I thought about it. I almost gave up the topic there just because Veyra was usually the expert when it came to this. But this time, I felt like I had an idea.

"The best long range AoE spreader in the game is Conflagration, right?"

"Well, that spell is garbage," Veyra said.

"But it usually hits multiple targets, yes." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. I pulled up the spell's stats to double check a few details. I wasn't a fire mage, so I had to pull up the game's wiki to see the stats. Conflagration: Create an explosive spark of flames on a target, dealing flat fire damage. Spray sparks deal damage to nearby enemies. Ignites flammable materials, causing burn.

Conflagration was one of the first spells available in the fire mage's skill tree, designed to teach players how to cast spells more than anything. It was a point and click damage ability—the most unskilled spell type that could exist. And while the spell was very good for the early game, it had low damage scaling at higher levels. Putting skill points into it was generally a waste of time. As Veyra said, it was garbage. For our use, though, I couldn't think of a better spell.

The damage numbers of the spell wouldn't matter as long as it activated the Ancient Arcanist robe's burn.

"I'd say, put one skill point into that," I said.

"It won't matter if Shaltar has shields or armor. Conflagration will always deal at least a little bit of damage."

"It's a good spell for us, I agree, but the problem isn't doing damage; it's surviving whatever Shaltar's guards attack us with. That's why I think we need to separate the monsters."

"What's the range of the spell, though?" I asked.

"Isn't it like over five hundred feet?" Veyra raised an eyebrow.

"I think the cap is like two hundred meters, yeah? The further an enemy is, the longer the cast time. It can also be cast straight on the ground if I quick-cast it."

"That should be enough range to camp in some good cheese spots, right? The castle has windows, right?" Her amused grin continued.

"So you're thinking of bombing a whole group of guards from a cheese spot? That'll be insane if it works."

"I'd say it's worth a shot. The worst is that we'll waste a bit of time."

"Sure, I guess," Veyra said.

"Let's sneak around a bit and see what we can do."

My idea of camping in a tree outside the castle to spam spells through the windows immediately had problems, the most obvious of which was that the castle was roughly twenty times taller than any of the withered trees attempting to grow in the poor, disheveled city. The castle had windows, though, which kept me hopeful.

"If we can get on that tower, we'll have four different windows in firing range." The tower I referred to stood at the eastern edge of the castle's walls: the closest wall to the keep itself. The tower cast a shadow on the slums, having a perfect high ground to crush any attacks from the eastern side of the city. Just as it offered protection, though, it would also be the perfect spot to fire at what it was supposed to protect.

Veyra and I observed it from a rooftop a few miles north, where the streets rose at an incline. At the highest hill, we'd portaled to the roof of a six-story tenement,: the highest building in the city. That just about brought us high enough to see past the castle's battlements, though the tower itself was still higher.

"I can see guards on the battlements from here," Veyra said, looking at it with binoculars.

"We'll need another cheese spot to deal with them first." I summoned my binoculars and studied the area as well. We didn't need anything complex. Just a small spot to spread AoE from, like a hill or a platform or a— Tavern. Just under the battlements was a wooden building with a slanted roof that I assumed was a tavern. The building stood out from the rest, constructed of a lighter shade of dark wood. Its roof would have already been a decent spot to fire from. But what if…

"I think I have an idea," I said.

"Let's grab a room from that tavern real quick." She raised an eyebrow.

"We can talk here just fine, can we not?"

"Not to talk," I said.

"I'll show you. If this works, this will be the dumbest cheese we've pulled off."

I had to pay a full silver coin for a room on the top floor of this slightly more sophisticated tavern. I told the innkeeper that I specifically wanted the highest room facing the tower outside. The innkeeper gave me a weird look, warning me that the view outside showed me nothing but a black wall. I told him that was perfect and rented the room. Not a shabby room. This time, I could have actually slept here without going insane. The quality of the room didn't matter, though.

The whole point was that we were in a semi-safe zone. A zone where we could safely log off without risking getting killed in the wilderness. I glanced out of the window, seeing the battlements of Shaltar's castle very close, perhaps three hundred feet away. I turned to Veyra, grinning.

"Do you get the idea now?" She looked up at the battlements with an amused smile.

"If this works, I swear, Wind Virtual will go bald."

"Perfect," I said.

"You can cast spells from the window, right? Does the bug still work?"

"It worked the last time I tried." Veyra stepped on the windowsill, leaning out with one hand on her staff in a way that half of her body was outside the tavern room. In Wonderwind, casting spells in semi-safe zones wasn't possible. Even in a city as hostile as this, taverns were treated as rest zones, where players could take a break and log off.

But in specific situations, where only the tavern was a semi-safe zone, leaning out of the tavern windows actually placed Veyra back in the hostile area of the city, which let her cast a spell.

"Yep, it works," Veyra said, while leaning out of the window rather dangerously. She got back in the room.

"And if I step back, it places me right back to the safe zone." A smile of anticipation appeared on my face. This wasn't an unknown bug by any means. It was rarely useful or game-breaking, though. When did taverns ever exist in a spot where bosses could be cheesed?

"I'll head outside and tell you where to fire," I said.

"Yep," she said with a similar grin. I exited the tavern and crossed a few blocks, avoiding all the scrawny NPCs. I climbed to another rooftop, where I had a safe position to spy the situation with binoculars. The guardsmen atop had crossbows or staves, appearing bored. I caught one of the demons picking his nose. Assassin:" All set. Do you have an angle?" Veyra:" I just barely see the edge of the battlement. The spray will just about make it in. You might have to drag monsters to that specific spot, though."

Assassin:" I can already see a few guards up there. Should be ready to fire." Veyra:" Alright. Here goes nothing, then." I watched the spot with binoculars. There were a few seconds of silence. Then her spell hit like a spark of tiny firecracker. The level one [Conflagration] was far from an impressive sight to behold. Its effects with Veyra's robe, however, put a grin on my face. A spark hit two of the three demons.

No damage came, of course, but a light blue burn grabbed their bodies like little souls burning them down. Within a second, [Torment] took their health bars 99%. The slow damage wasn't nearly enough to cause them to retreat. The guardsmen grimaced and readied their bows, scanning the streets below. Another [Conflagration] hit, and the third guard received [Torment] as well. Veyra:" Am I hitting anything?" Assassin:" Yep, keep firing." I had never seen monsters be so confused.

They tried their hardest to find whatever was shooting them. The tavern was in their view, and their eyes had scanned past it multiple times. If they squinted, they could have seen Veyra's staff poking out of the windows. For some reason, they just didn't find her. Their shouting looked even goofier through the binoculars. More demons rushed in, only to share the fate of slowly burning to Veyra's little firecrackers. Veyra had been right in one thing.

The upgraded monster AI was intelligent enough to call for reinforcements when necessary. They just weren't intelligent enough to fire back at a tavern room we were staying in. Veyra leaned out of the window to fire a quick spell before immediately ducking back into cover. After three seconds, she repeated the process. I chuckled like a dumb kid while the demons scrambled around, struggling to figure out just what was burning them to death.