Duh

“... Aren't we already?”, Athariel wondered.

“Are you asking, whether we want to change classes to one that is an explicit worshiper, like me becoming a priestess?”, Ariadne asked, “Because than the answer is no!”

Helga tried her best to elaborate, but was interrupted by Joylanda, who hugged Helga from behind while groping her breasts:“Babe I'll put in the work to worship your god every night.”

“What we are asking, is whether you'd be willing to join a guild specifically to work for Cupidite and receive quests from them”, you interrupted, before Joylanda could steer the conversation any more towards sex.

“... Did you just make that up?”, Ariadne half joked while eying Helga suspiciously.

“We are serious. Nimis and I are the founding members of the 'Crusaders of Love' a guild dedicated to Cupidite to enact their will. This is your invitation.”

DING

“Are you seriously telling me, recruiting us was a QUEST? Worth XP?”, Joylanda asked out loud as she observed the bar marking her progress to level 14 make a noticeable jump and you had your second level up in as many hours. This time though there were only stat-increases.

“I guess Cupidite has fewer followers than I though, if they can afford to favor us like that”, Helga mused, “Now we've finished our shopping, we're all in a guild, or rather, all of us, who want to and we have an active quest. We were thinking to travel to the various starting towns and ask about this Mazoga and Mircalla. Any objections?”

“Do we have to focus on this quest? Because there are good chances we won't be making any headway for a while”, Ariadne questioned.

“I don't see, why we shouldn't be allowed to do other quests, while we're out and about. Especially since we're still in a party with someone, who isn't in the guild”, you answered.

And so that was, what you did: You asked the various shopkeepers and quest givers whether they could point you towards Mazoga or Mircalla (which they were not happy to, stating that their customers privacy would take precedent). You were about to call it quits, when someone was clearing their throat behind you: “Uhm... I heard you're looking for someone?”

It was the level 2 heroine your friends had helped with “Bitchez-killor 69 420”: Hi, I'm Elaine and I wanted to pay you back for helping me yesterday... Did I hear that right, that you're looking for a heroine named 'Mazoga'? I think I can help you...”

Helga came to the front and shook her hand in greating: “I'm Helga, and yes, you hear right. We're looking for two followers of Cupidite. Mircalla and Mazoga.”

“Followers of Cupidite? Well all I can tell you, is that I know an orc, who goes by Mazoga. She was the one who convinced me, to go to Alluvia. Last I heard of her, I had just arrived. We're not exactly close, but she did mention, that since made a change in carriers, she's very busy at the time. She originally planned to meet me here... Did you say, the other one your looking for was 'Mircalla'? The lesbian vampire?”

“... I'm pretty sure, we're looking for a heroine...”

“Oh, not a real vampire. It's a story. Look up 'Carmilla' when you have the time. It's basically 'Dracula' but as a lesbian romance. Mircalla is one of the past aliases, the titular vampiress used.”

“That's perfectly in line as a name for who we're looking for, but … honestly that doesn't really help.”

“Would it help, if I told her last known location?”

The house of dreams.

It was an infamous raid-dungeon where the beta-reviewers unanimously said: “It's awful. Put it in the game.”

A two and a half hour slog, with no breaks. Sixteen bosses, no safe rooms, traders or anything to stop the fighting, all enemies scaled to the level of the strongest hero currently inside and all non-bosses respawned so quickly, that certain areas could only be looted at all with very specific builds and tactics. Worst of all, if a hero got past a certain point less than one third in, they would respawn there. Only to be almost immediately attacked again. At that point most players could straight up delete their character as with now much fewer potions the way back might as well be closed of entirely.

The loot was considered mediocre even when it had just been added. All of this together meant, that only two very specific types of heroes came there: challenge runners and pros, who wanted to raise their level as quickly as possible. The enormous difficulty made it uninteresting for anybody, who had less than excellent skills.

“Are we sure, she doesn't want to kill us?”, Athariel asked, after you relayed what you knew about the location Elaine told you.

Helga looked at the map: “I mean it's a two days travel. I think if we're walking senselessly to our deaths, god would want us.”

“Two days?”, Joylanda asked, “I thought it was an endgame dungeon.”

“... Yes, but it's in an early game area. There is a level 20 iron golem with super low perception as a guard, so noobs won't wander in by accident, but that's it. Even if the golem was to tough for the six of us, we could just slip by”, Helga answered, clearly reading the wiki is she went.

“So... we have our goal?”, Ariadne asked timidly.

“I see three options: one, we go there right now. Two, we try to find Mircalla instead until we can find Mazoga somewhere else, and three, we grind levels for a bit, to increase our chances of making it through there. Did I miss anything? Good, so who is for option one?”

Joylanda, Helga, Schlch and you raised your hands, or rather you said “aye” and the others raised their hands.

“Two?”

Ariadne raised her hand.

“Three?”

Athariel did not raise her hand: “I abstain.”

“Then it's decided: 4 to 1 to 0, we're heading for the house of dreams, but try to take as much exp along the way as we possibly can.”

Combat was largely uneventful. You could stay outside of Schlch for quite some time, before even taking health damage and then you could use healing touch on yourself, which Joylanda adamantly referred to as you touching yourself. Outside of Schlch you drew all the aggro. Since in the early game area most enemies were rather small you could easily grapple them one, sometimes even two, at a time and use your venomous bite on them. None of the enemies had nearly enough poison resistance to survive.

When it was time to make camp for the night both Schlch and you had made another level up, leaving you at level 5 and it at level 8.

“It's nice to talk to the both of you at once”, said the pie with a hole in the middle.

You glanced to the side and saw Helga, naked and doing exactly what Ariadne had done for her no five minutes before you had fallen asleep.

“Oh my god”

“Cupidite is fine”, the banana said with a wink, “What I wanted to tell you: You're going the right way. However I think you can guess, why Mazoga is there. Right now she's burning the midnight oil, not even using it as lube. If I can somehow catch her anything close to sleeping, I'm going to tell her, to meet you at the entrance, but … let's just say you're lucky Nimis can punch well above his weight.”

“Thank you, Mistress”, Helga moaned out.

“Hey, I should be thanking you”, the lubed up hand answered.

The others took the news well, until Ariadne pointed out a problem: “For as long as Mazoga is in there, the enemies in there will have about her level. We know she's been there since at least last week and from what Cupidite said, she had not taken any breaks. What level do you think we're dealing with here?”

You estimated the math in your head: “Assuming she's still a lone paladin, but level 1, when she sent that message to Elaine, she could make one crawl about every three hours. Since the enemies scale with her she should be about the same level as we are, when we meet her.”

“Than why the warning?”, she countered, “Not to mention that for every second we need to get there, she'll get stronger and for every level she gets stronger the house of dreams gets harder!”

“So what, you want to give up, because it's going to be difficult? Were you like this, when Cupidite challenged you to take out a cities worth of rapists?”, you scolded her.

“You know, that this is different. One: Back then, I could easily just start over, if we failed.

Two: We knew exactly, what we were in for and had a plan and three: I don't see, what we'd achieve, by going here? From what Elaine told us, Mazoga knows what she's doing, so we won't have to save her, we could just wait for her to come back!”

To your surprise it was Joylanda, that responded: “You're afraid, you'll use the progress, you've made so far.”

“YES! Are you not?”

“In general? Yes, of course. Here specifically? No.”

“What?”

“You mentioned not having a plan, but it seems, you haven't been properly paying attention, what the newest addition to our party can do.”

“What could Nimis do? He needs like ten seconds to kill a giant rat!”

“Nimis needs about ten seconds to kill anything with less than 10% poison resistance! His venomous bite does damage proportional to the victim's max hp AND paralyzes! All we have to do is distract the enemies, so Schlch and him can grapple them, than Nimis takes a chomp and that enemy is out of commission!”

“... Really? You're telling me it's that easy?”

“Not quite, but I wanted you to understand, that our situation is way better, than you made it out to be. Undead can't be paralyzed and some enemies can have up to 70% poison resistance, so he'd have to bite those at least thrice, though depending on the level we're talking, we might just be able to finish them of ourselves.”

Ariadne slumped her shoulders: “You wouldn't be you, if you wouldn't throw yourself headfirst into danger... okay, let's go.”

And so on we went southwest. As you got further from the tutorial, and the mobs approached level 6 Schlch and you got significant exp. From giant rats to wolves and even some bears Helga had picked a good route, that kept you fighting almost non-stop against enemies, that couldn't really damage you.

Over the course of the day the landscape changed from meadows to steppes and the mobs changed with them from mammals to mostly reptiles and bugs. The snakes were about level 4, the scorpions level 6.

And then Helga stopped.

You were now level 6 yourself, Schlch was level 9 and the rest of the group was level 14. There were loud thumping steps heard over the next dune.

Athariel spoke up first: “Is that...?”

“Most likely.”

“So right there is...?”

“Yes.”

“So what's the plan?”

“Okay, from what I know about iron golems, it moves very slow and has a slow attack speed, but packs quite the punch, so for starters we'll keep at the edge of it's range and Schlch tries to get Nimis close. Now they both take very little damage from bludgeoning attacks, but we should still try and see, if we can get back its aggro, before it can land a hit on them.

The golem has 75% poison resistance, but it doesn't say resistance or immunity to paralyzing. So as soon as Nimis lands his first bite you, Athariel, have to check whether or not it is paralyzed. If it is Nimis stays close and reapplies his bite as often as he can, while we go in, to speed it up.”

“... and if not?”, Joylanda asked.

Helga sighed: “If we can't paralyze it, we have to do it the 'normal' way. This means no attacks, that are neither magical or armorpiercing and avoid fire, since it's 95% resistant. If I'm not mistaken, that means it's almost exclusively Ariadne and I, when I'm smiting.”

“My sneak attacks bypass all armor and resistance, so I could attack/disengage/attack.”

“That's good news. Athariel, you'll have to check, if she's right. We'll need Joylanda to run distraction, if sneak attacks don't work. What about you? Any status effects can you apply?”

“The spear does 5% AP on a charge, so if I have to disengage I can do something when I come back. I also have this new skill 'Matador': **** a non-sentient creature to focus it's attacks on a target within [lvl] meters, the victim is already hostile to, for [lvl] + 2] seconds.”

Helga stared for a few seconds at Athariel: “Unless Nimis' Venemous Bite works, this'll be literally the most useful ability any of could have! Please tell me, you can spam it!”

“Not really. It costs 5 MP and has a three second cool-down after it wears of.”

“That's still good enough. That leaves you for last, Ariadne. You'll be our DPS in this battle. What can you do?”

“Okay... so Fireball is out, Blast has a two meter radius,... Chainlightning won't do any more damage than normal Lightning against a single enemy, right?... I think the best I can do is Frostbreath and Essence-charge.”

“Sounds good enough... How exactly do this work?”

“Frostbreath is a cone, that does damage by surface area and causes a speed reduction, but it has a ten second cooldown and costs 20 MP.

Essence-charge creates a ghost from that sprints forward and does a lot of magic damage on impact. It only has a two second cooldown but costs 30 MP.”

“No way your regen can keep up with that. Everybody other than Athariel give your MP potions to Ariadne... So do we have anything else, we can do to prepare? Good let's take five minutes and then we try plan a.”